What meal can I transport to PIL so we don’t starve??

[yorkshireyummymummy]

In light of the recent thread about people visiting in laws and not getting fed enough to feed a mouse I started to get the willies.

WE are visiting PIL this weekend for 5 days.
MIL used to be a lovely cook but doesn’t bother anymore andserves small portions ofstrange food.

We are travelling from Yorkshire to Hampshire on Friday and I want to take that nights dinner with me. It will take about 6 hrs to get there and it will have to be something I can transport in a cool bag with those frozen freezer packs. It can be transported in Tupperware or sealable bags.

Any suggestions from you lovely clever mums/women??

Don’t let us starve!!! Especially my poor FIL who is always hungry!!

I'd also take cheese, biscuits, crackers etc and wine/port
But that's what I crave when I've done a long arsed journey and can't then be bothered to do anything other than sit, catch up and relax!

I’m going to make a big batch of bolognaise , pasta , Greek salad 🥗 ( thanks for the suggestion! Great idea!) and some garlic bread.
I will freeze it so it defrosts en route.
I’m going to take cheese and biscuits too ( great suggestion Pepsi!) and I will also bake a cake and take that.
I think I will make some curry for Friday and I might make too much!
Thanks girls!

If you did a big chilli and took rice, wraps, jackets, tortilla chips, sour cream, guacamole etc you could have the base chilli in multiple guises on different nights, with rice one, on jackets, in quaesidilla etc. Left over tortilla chips and dips make good snacks if required!

The chilli sounds good, it's often one of my go to meals.

Ooh cheese and biscuits

My mum has a cats arse face when it arrives but I don’t care now

@RoxytheRexy have you talked to her about it?? What on Earth does she say about having no food to feed her DGC?

Tesco do a entertaining range , I got a veg lasagne ( we are vegetarian) for a recent holiday . It fed 12 and was packaged well for transport . I brought cool bags and collected from click and collect on the way . You need to order a few days in advance but there are loads of options . It's called easy entertaining I think .. i believe marks etc do it too.

Just MIL has had 50 years of cooking and is sick of it . She has no appetite really (she’s a tiny lady)and serves nouvelle cuisine size portions. So FIL is always hungry!

Perhaps your "poor hungry FIL" could finally cook something for himself then? She's had 50 years of cooking for him and finally says enough, why is it her responsibility until she dies?

Hotblack
He fought in WW2, built a very successful business up from his own hard work, MIL never had to work, had amazing holidays, children privatly educated, furs & jewels for birthdays and Christmas......he still does the gardening and odd jobs round the house. She has a cleaner. He has no interest in cooking and doesn’t want to learn - and frankly, if I’m being honest I don’t think he should have to either. He’s too old and tired, just wants to potter about doing what he can and have something nice to eat. In his twilight years I don’t think that’s too much to ask really do you?

I do actually, yes. What about her twilight years? Because she's old she should continue to cook for him forever? You wouldn't be saying this stuff to any of the younger women on the site.
He's old and tired, probably so is she, of waiting on him for 5 decades.

Maybe neither should cook. Maybe they are happy as they are? They are not asking for any help. When you go round, treat them to some nice meals, or if you are genuinely worried get some ready meals delivered for them on a regular basis.

Yeah many times. She just says she doesn’t eat that stuff. There’s a lot of weird food stuff going on.

There’s a thread running at the moment and lots of people saying not having food in the house and being hungry was the norm for them. It was for us. I think I was mid-twenties before I learnt that you can get a ‘full’ feeling. I never had it as a child and it took a while to ‘allow’ myself to have it as an adult. Completely learnt behaviour as I absolutely love food now

hotblack
She is twenty two years younger than him.
No , I might not say it to younger women on this site but that’s because younger women have very different marriages than the generations of my PIL had.
When they married she knew she would never have to work, never clean the house (if she didn’t want to), but she had to entertain regularly and look good, cook his meals, run the house, and look after him in his old age.
So no, I do not expect him to learn to cook and I think it’s an utterly stupid thing to expect a 95 year old man to do it. I wouldn’t even dream of suggesting it as it’s quite preposterous.

Sounds like - if one is disinterested and the other hungry - your PILs could generally do with a little bit of help with their meals, at least sometimes. I wonder if you could gently suggest getting some good quality freezer bits in (in the spirit of “just for a couple of times a week to give you a change/as a breather/little treat”). Cook do gift vouchers. So do M&S and Waitrose, or there are those Farm Food people (but the adverts make them look a bit meals-on-wheels-ish so maybe not such a palatable option).

Looking at my grandparents - who are pretty much the same generation as your PIL - they sometimes go for the Cook type meals as a bit of a little treat/everyday luxury - in the same way as they now have a cleaner and a gardener in regularly. Realistically, my grandpa - at 92 - will neither be learning to cook nor giving up smoking, but equally at 89 it is too much for my grandma to do all the meals, especially the prep (and she likes cooking). So, they get upmarket ready meals 2/3 times a week, and get stuff like pre cut veg, the meat that comes oven ready in a little roasting tray etc for the other days. Would that help your PILs?

she knew she would never have to work, never clean the house (if she didn’t want to), but she had to entertain regularly and look good, cook his meals, run the house, and look after him in his old age

So she was effectively a company wife? Which is a full time job for those who do it alongside taking majority responsibility for all family stuff. I don't really see why women doing this shouldn't get to retire just because their jobs are unpaid in conventional terms.

If she is sick of endless cooking and meal prep after 50 odd years but they have the means for help then it may make more sense to pay for someone to batch cook periodically or buy in good quality ready made food. Then everyone can be happy. They can each potter at the parts they enjoy and pay someone to do the parts they don't like.

With elderly Aunt and Uncle I used to make up a lovely hamper as a gift to say thank you. Perhaps you could do that. Apart from that you have been given some excellent ideas on here.

No but she’s 73 and knackered.
It’s her old age too now.
Nice of you to take stuff over, not so nice to be bitchy about your MIL whilst doing it.

It does sound rather as if dfil's set up of having dmil in charge of the catering is no longer working for either of them.

He's 90+, she's 70+. He's probably not at a point in his life where he's suddenly going to embrace cooking if he's spent the best part of a century having it be someone else's job. She's done with it after umpty years & fair enough.

I'd take a good lasagne & salad as being something everyone will eat.

What PIL eat going forward is a bit more of a worry.

Filling the freezer isn't going to work if neither of them wants to operate the microwave.

It sounds like they need outside help, tbh.

FFS. You can get your supermarket shopping delivered to pretty much anywhere in the UK.

There’s six of us and the lovely in laws/great aunts/ cousins who live alone have no idea how much loo roll is required. Let alone calories.

@thecrowfrombelow

I haven’t been bitchy about her. I love her.
And she’s not knackered- she just doesn’t want to do it anymore for more reasons Than I care to mention here.
I was just hoping for some inspiration and maybe some new food ideas.
Your comment was unnecessary. Don’t you have anything better to do??

You have been quite snarky about her. She needs help too, and you have made it sound as if it only FIL who is suffering.

You’ve had loads of ideas but here’s a few more: Make a lasagne, couple of stews, get them a Cook voucher, encourage FIL to buy ready meals that will go in the oven - Charlie Bighams?
but mainly it sounds like your DH needs to think about long term planning and care.

I've just re read the thread and I can't see that the OP has been unpleasant about her MIL .

Odd that the posts shld be intepreted in such a negative way .

Massive drip to mention he's 95.

So she signed up to a life of wifey duties and must do them for ever? Sod that for a lark.

It wasbnt a drip. She only mentioned about him being 95 when people started going on about teaching him to cook.

Is FIL incapable of cooking?