Senior Home Care Hacks for Easy Cooking

Senior Cooking: Senior Home Care East Hampton NY

Getting seniors who are aging in place to eat enough can be a challenge. Seniors often won’t bother to cook healthy meals for themselves. Senior home care is a great way to encourage seniors to eat the meals they should eat because with seniors home care someone will be there with your senior parent to help them cook, help them shop, and share the meal with them. When seniors can spend time cooking, talking, and sharing a meal with a friend they are much more likely to look forward to eating a healthy meal.

Start With a Prepared Meal

This is a great way for seniors to make a meal their own without putting in a lot of work. Starting with a prepared meal and then adding vegetables, spices, sauces, and other items to make it unique or make it the way they like it eliminates the hard work of cooking. For example, your senior parent or their senior home care provider can buy an already roasted chicken at the store and a tray of fresh, pre-washed and cut veggies and use their own condiments, sauces, and spices to create a fabulous chicken and vegetable dinner.

Do Meal Prep The Right Way

The secret to effective meal preparation is to make ingredients, not actual meals. Your senior parent may not want to eat leftovers or eat a particular meal even if it’s already prepped. Instead of that a senior home care provider can spend an afternoon cooking up several different proteins like chicken, turkey, or steak. They can cook a variety of vegetables and prepare some salads too. Then follow up with some sides like rice, pasta, or baked potatoes.

They can also individually portion all of those items and label them, then put them in the fridge in microwavable containers. All your senior loved one needs to do for a great healthy meal is pick the protein they want, the vegetables that look good to them, and whatever side dish they want for that meal.

Keep Everything at Counter Level

It will make cooking and cleanup much easier to keep everything at counter level so that seniors don’t have to bend over to get pots and pans or put them away. Appliance garages and cupboards which are built into the wall can provide hidden storage for pots and pans, gadgets, and other items that your senior parent uses every day.

Use a Kitchen Cart

A mobile kitchen cart is something every senior should have. Seniors can use the cart to help keep their balance as they are moving around the kitchen. They can put finished plates and beverages on the cart to move them safely to the table without any risk of dropping them. And when seniors are cooking they can go to the cupboard or fridge and put all the ingredients they will need on the cart and bring them all back to where they are cooking. That eliminates the need to make a lot of short trips around the kitchen carrying ingredients.

If you or an aging loved one are considering Senior Home Care in East Hampton, NY, call the caring staff at Artful Home Care today at 631-685-5001.