I have a story to share with you.
It’s been a little under a year since Sarah and I relaunched Meal Planning Mommies using WordPress instead of Blogger. There is a big difference between the two! After doing some research we decided that WordPress was the way to go because it had so much more to offer and we were excited to make the switch! It was a steep learning curve but we were motivated by big-picture thinking so we dove right in and we haven’t regretted it since, but…
One of the things we were able to add when we started using WordPress was a “Contact” page where our readers could message us and click “Send” and it would come straight to our email…. and technically that is what happened… but, for whatever reason, the messages bypassed our inbox and went straight to our “Junk” folder! (shock face)
For months. It did this for MONTHS before we realized it. My daughter helped me try to capture the feelings of the moment I realized this by giving me her best “Home Alone” face… (thank you Keely)
Truly, I don’t think we would have even caught it had it not been for a sweet supportive reader who went out of her way not only to send us a long thoughtful message through our contact page, but also a short comment to say that she sent the longer message. I got the short comment but couldn’t find the longer message so I started to dig a little bit.
My husband helped me figure out how to retrieve the messages and we were able to read them. All 40 of them. (it could have been way worse) Your messages were very kind and encouraging and so we want to say a big THANK YOU!
Out of the messages there were a couple that inspired me to think more creatively about how to help those of our readers who feed one, two, or three people when they cook, as opposed to the five that I cook for. As I considered it more thoughtfully it occurred to me that meal planning and cooking for one to two people might look different than cooking for a family of five. I wanted to spend a couple of posts visiting this topic, but I wasn’t sure where to start.
One of our readers offered a couple of suggestions of what works for her. I wanted to share one of her ideas and show you (in my next post) how I implemented this concept in my own kitchen. This advice can help families of any size really.
Here is what Shelley wrote to us:
As I search the recipes on your site (and others), I realized that none of them are really “single person friendly.” There are so many casseroles, crock pot meals, etc. that are made in larger quantities that are just too tempting to eat more than the limits. One solution I have found is to divide the larger meals into proper portions before you sit down to eat; put them in a large muffin tin, freeze them, pop them out when frozen and store them in zipper freezer bags. Temptation removed and future meals already prepared.
Also, you might suggest to your followers to build a casserole right in the muffin tin, which I find is super easy. One of my favorites is to make a “crust” of cooked mashed potatoes in the tin, fill with any meat or veggie filling and bake. It’s easy to get very creative with this basic idea. Hope this helps some of your readers.
I want to thank you Shelley, for your message, because shortly after reading your advice I had an opportunity to use it to help someone else! (Don’t you love it when that happens!?) A lady who helps out as a volunteer where I work told us she would have to stop volunteering for a while because she was going to have shoulder surgery done and the recovery time after the surgery would be several weeks. We will miss her in the office, of course, but more importantly we wanted to help her. She lives alone and if you ask her she would tell you that it is no big deal because she is used to living alone and doing things for herself. What she won’t tell you is that the process of healing from shoulder surgery is long and hard and it will be very difficult to do even basic everyday things for a while.
The light-bulb moment happened when I was asking how we could help her and she said she didn’t want people just popping over to her house, even if it was to help. She wasn’t sure how presentable she would be since even showering and getting dressed could be difficult. I wanted to help her with meals but I wanted to honor her request that people not come over everyday and I didn’t want to give her big meals when it would just be her eating them anyway because then she would have to deal with leftovers and even fumbling around with leftovers could prove to be difficult to do with just one hand. So, it boils down to this…
The problem:
My friend will have to keep low, not using one arm/shoulder for a few weeks. We want to help with food but she doesn’t want people popping over with food, which could make her feel like she needs to get presentable for company. (Who can blame her!?)
Our solution:
Rather than setting up a schedule for people to bring her meals, we made individual servings of foods that can go in the freezer so she can pop one out of the freezer, microwave it, and eat it whenever she wants. This would be easy enough that she can do it one handed and because each serving would be small and light weight it would not cause a lot of strain on her other arm.
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