Cooking Her Meals: Cook Yourself or Hire the Prep?

Dinner takes more hands than it seems to. Before you decide who cooks, write the meal on the day sheet as a short list of jobs: planning, shopping, prep, cooking, plating, feeding, and cleanup. Each job gets one owner and one time. Most husbands find that two or three of those jobs are the ones pulling them away from her, and those are the jobs to think about handing off.

Local option: New Plan Care gives families in the St. Louis area in-home help so a parent can stay home: companionship, help with bathing and dressing, meals, and overnight care. Call (314) 405-0887.

Split the meal before you hire anyone

Planning and shopping can usually move to someone else without any change in her care. Prep, such as chopping, portioning, and washing vegetables, is often the easiest hands-off job because it can be done in a kitchen while she rests in the next room. Cooking at the stove while she is in the room is where you need to be honest with yourself. If she wanders, reaches for hot pans, or needs you at the table at the same minute, the stove belongs to you, or it belongs to a second person standing there.

Check what she can actually eat

Before a hired helper plans or plates a meal, find out from her doctor, her speech therapist, or the discharge team whether she needs a particular texture, a cut size, or fluid limits. Do not guess. Write the answer on the handoff sheet in plain words, such as soft foods only or cut into small pieces, so the helper does not need to ask you at 5 p.m.

Questions to ask a helper before the first dinner

• Will you plan from a list I give you, or do you need to build the menu yourself?
• Can you cook in our kitchen with the equipment we already have?
• Will you label containers with the day and time?
• Who cleans the stove, and when?
• If she refuses the meal, what should you do, and who do you call?

Test one dinner

Pick a weeknight and keep yourself in the house, but out of the kitchen. Let the helper or a family member run prep and cooking while you sit with her. Time the cooking, note where the pans end up, and check whether she ate what was served. If it works, keep it. If the helper needs you in the kitchen every five minutes, the job has not really been handed off yet.

What to decide at 6 p.m.

Look at the day sheet. If you can cook and plate in the half hour after her evening transfer without leaving her alone, keep cooking. If cooking pulls you away from her, hand off the prep and the cleanup first and keep the plating and the feeding for yourself. That split is often enough to make the rest of the evening manageable.