When's Dinner?

 

Caprese salad in a wonton cup

This is one of Stephan’s favorite phrases. He starts about 4:30 pm asking, “When’s dinner?” I usually try to put him off until 5:30 pm, but the request just gets more and more urgent the longer I wait. I could give him a hamburger every night and he would be fine with that, but frankly, I get bored and, as much as I like to cook, there are some days that I am just not up to the task. 

What are some ways to make buying groceries and preparing meals a bit easier? Let’s start with groceries. When Stephan first was diagnosed, I could still leave him at home by himself long enough to go to the grocery store. I could even take him with me and he could help with the grocery shopping. We had an app on our phones that allowed us to share the grocery list. I could send him off to retrieve items on the list while I found other items. 

As the disease progressed, I was able to leave him for shorter and shorter amounts of time and taking him with me was much too challenging since I could never find him when I was ready to checkout. At that point I started using an app called Clicklist which allowed me to choose my groceries online and then pick them up curbside at Mariano’s in Illinois or here in Paris, at Kroger. Walmart also has curbside pickup. Using this service allowed me to be away from Stephan for less than half an hour. Clicklist has a service fee of $4.99 per pickup, well worth the cost for the time it saved. Walmart has free pickup.

Fast forward a few months and Stephan was no longer able to be left alone for even a few minutes. At that point I started researching delivery services. After the first few deliveries, I wondered why I had waited so long. Again, I was able to shop online, but now I didn’t have to leave the house. They bring the groceries in and put them in my kitchen! Depending on where you live you may have one or more choices in services and the stores they use. In Paris, we have Instacart. Instacart will go to Kroger, Brookshires, Aldi, Petco, and CVS. Depending on your location, they may have other stores including Costco. You can pay each time you order, or you can pay for a year and get unlimited deliveries. The $149 per year is worth every penny to have my groceries delivered within two hours and the peace of mind I have from knowing that Stephan is safe and not alone. As long as the order is over $35 they will deliver to you within a scheduled window. I can even tip the shopper online so I don’t have to worry about whether I have cash available. Other online delivery services include Shipt (which will also shop at Target) and Peapod. Make sure you read the terms of service, some stores will mark their prices up for the delivery service. Aldi marks their prices up, but Kroger does not.

Many groceries can now be purchased online. Costco, Amazon Pantry, and HEB are just a few of the sites that I use. In fact, Amazon and I have become well-acquainted for many different items. One thing I buy a lot of is paper plates. Early on, Stephan lost control of his hands and began dropping things. Needless to say we started using a lot of paper plates. It was safer for Stephan and faster and easier for me. It is much easier to order what I need online and have it delivered. Amazon Prime was another subscription that was a lifesaver. I can find just about anything on Amazon and with the Prime membership, I get it in two days with free shipping.

Now that you have your groceries, let me give you a few ideas for meal prep. I love to cook, and if I do say so myself, I’m pretty good at it. However, this is a no judgment zone and if you have to cook TV dinners to survive, then by all means, do what you have to do. However, Stephan and I have always eaten well and one of the things we have always enjoyed was cooking and eating good food. Now that he has problems with feeding himself, it has been a challenge to help him remain independent while still preparing the types of food he likes. I could go the easy route and just give him a hamburger, but I am trying to preserve as much of our former life as possible.

I love to watch the cooking shows and to challenge myself as to what I would prepare given the same circumstances as the contestants. Some of my favorite challenges are when they have to take an old favorite and reinvent the dish into something new and innovative. So, I put on my cooking show hat and started working on ideas for how to take some of our favorite meals and make them into finger food in order to allow Stephan to feed himself. Here are a few ideas that have worked for us in recent weeks:

First, there are the old standards: hamburgers, brats, and fajitas. One quick caveat with fajitas – fold up the bottom of the tortilla before you roll it or all the food may fall out when they try to pick it up. There are all sorts of ideas for gourmet burgers and brats these days, so you can make them as fancy or as casual as you like.

My recent favorite is wonton cups. I buy wonton wrappers and put them in mini muffin tins, shaping them into small cups. I put them in a 350 degree oven for 5-6 minutes and they turn into crispy little cups that I can fill with a number of different things. Salad has been a problem for Stephan, so I diced up tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, and mozzarella cheese and put them in the wonton cups with a little olive oil and salt. Voila! Finger friendly Greek salad. Another day I diced up tomatoes, mozzarella cheese, chopped basil, and olive oil for a Caprese salad. I have also filled them with cream cheese, ground beef, salsa and shredded cheddar cheese for a taco bite. When we had tamales last night, I put rice and beans in the wonton cups. For dessert I filled them with cream cheese and jam. Once you fill them, throw them back in the oven for another five minutes and you have a finger friendly dinner.

A lot of ideas that I am working on are based on party food that I am trying to make healthier. Some of these include:

1. Tortilla rollups – In a flour tortilla, spread cream cheese, add ham, green onions, shrimp, bacon, jalapeños, or whatever sounds good to you. Roll it up like a pinwheel and slice into 1″ slices.
2. Stuffed mushrooms – I bought baby bella mushrooms and stuffed them with bread crumbs, cheese, and sausage. 
3. Mini quiches – you can buy these pre-made or you can use a refrigerated pie crust cut out circles to line regular muffin tins to make small quiches that are still easy to pick up, but not so tiny
4. Mini pizzas – Aldi has mini naan breads that work great for small pizzas. I also found small pizza crusts at the Dollar Tree and Walmart. I buy marinara sauce and pizza toppings. I found a really nice chipotle raspberry sauce at Costco that also makes a great barbecue pizza with chicken or pulled pork.
5. Fruit or cheese plate – crackers, cheese, grapes, olives, deli meats. I especially like to do this when we are watching a football game. He can eat in his recliner, it is easy for him to eat, and it doesn’t make a mess.
6. Spring rolls – you can buy spring roll wrappers and fill them with cole slaw, shrimp, shredded pork, other shredded veggies, avocado slices. Stephan is unable to dip into a sauce, so I don’t use sauce, but you could use sweet and sour or soy sauce.
7. Empanadas – Stuff anything into a fried pie and it works for me. These are a little more labor intensive, so I would consider buying these pre-made.
8. Mini stuffed peppers – Aldi usually has mini red, yellow, and orange peppers that could be stuffed like a large pepper, but would be much easier to eat.
9. Sliders – Since these have become popular it is relatively easy to find slider buns. If you can’t find slider buns, you could always use a dinner roll. I think any sandwich on a slider/dinner roll is just a little fancier.
10. Puff pastry – like empanadas, anything wrapped in puff pastry has to be good. You could use small bits of beef and make mini Beef Wellingtons; you can buy mini chocolate bars and make a fantastic dessert; use a spinach and cheese mixture for spanakopita. Puff pastry is quick and easy and tastes like you spent hours.
11. Meatballs – stuffed with cheese, or pineapple, or bacon.
12. Soup in a mug – It is still too hot in Texas for me to think about soup, but I will be using this idea when it cools off. He can’t use a spoon, but if I put the soup in a mug, he would be able to drink it.
13. French Toast Rollups – This is an idea I got from a friend and fellow caregiver. She made stuffed french toast rolls. She cut the crust off the bread, rolled it out flat and then spread cream cheese and sliced bananas inside. She then battered it and cooked it like traditional french toast. You could take this idea and fill it with ham and cheese, or turkey, or sausage, or even peanut butter and jelly.

A lot of these ideas are things you can already find in the frozen food section of the grocery store (or online) and would be even easier than making from scratch. I keep things like tortillas, wonton wrappers, and puff pastry on hand so I can whip up dinner quickly. 

Stephan’s problem is being able to control his hands so finger food solves a lot of our issues. What has worked for you? What issues do you have? Let me know and I’ll see what answers I can find.

Until next time!
Martha