Emergency accommodation cooking

[Whatoflife]

I have a friend with partner and toddler in emergency accommodation.
During the week she drives her partner to work (very part time) and spends the afternoon with her mum who then cooks dinner for them. That doesn’t happen weekends and school hols and she’s struggling to provide her child a healthy warm meal in the evening. She doesn’t want to drive to her mums as can’t afford the petrol.
What can she prepare in her room? Healthy, hot, vegan, kettle only.
What on earth do people do in this situation?

Noodles? Drop being vegan for the duration? Can she buy a slow cooker? They can be as little as £10?

Is she allowed to use something like a microwave oven, air fryer, instant pot, slow cooker or whatever she normally uses to cook the food they eat? Would someone be able to lend or buy her one?

Most things that can be prepared by adding boiling water are ultra processed so not healthy unfortunately.

Also, can they work more hours between them? There's lots of jobs available at the moment, so unless there are circumstances you haven't mentioned, they should be able to get more work than 'very part time' between two adults.

Is there no communal kitchen with microwave?

In similar circumstances I bought a slow cooker from Argos and ate chilli a lot

I should have added
She’s quite young for her age (25) and has autism and adhd. She’s managing very well generally. Mentally she’s unable to work (not sure about why the partner doesn’t work more 🤔)
She doesn’t have any food storage, cooking or washing up facilities.
She’s not allowed a microwave and I assume that also means slow cooker, air fryer etc. But she’s in a hotel room anyway so literally no space to chop, wash up etc.

What does she have to work with - does the emergency accomodation provide food wise and/or shared facilities? Do they really put a family up in a hotel type room with no access to anything to feed their children?

The part time parent needs to work more.
Is there anything she can do to make herself fit to work?
If being vegan limits food choices and impacts health she needs to reconsider
Evening meals do not need to be hot to be healthy, is hot food is available at other times?
They both need to make sure their contraception is rock solid.

Jack Monroe’s recipes are perfect for this situation Here

Could she prepare food at her mum's?

If so, google Mason jar noodle soup.

She can prep the veg and sauce and put noodles in, then add just/boiled water back at her accommodation.

Porridge is also excellent.

Is the partner in the hotel with them? Does he/she have access to food prep facilities at work or family/friends?

Any other family friends locally who could let them use their kitchen facilities for storage and prep?

I lived in a hotel room for work for a few weeks. I bought an electric cool box and brought a chopping board / knife / washing up brush / tea towel / washing up liquid.

Admittedly it wasn't hot food but I did well buying salad / veggies / cooked meat / cheese from the local Tesco express. She could add tinned / pouches of lentils / chickpeas / nuts. Top with vegan Mayo / vinaigrette.

It was dull but healthy.

If she's not allowed any plug in devices then it will have to be cold food.

At a push you could empty and cook micro rice pouches for a couple of minutes in minimal hot water in the kettle - just keep something leaning on the switch? You could do frozen peas / tinned veg like that too?? Stock cube in the water to make a kind of pilaf??

In my room, there was a window sill which was always pretty cold so I didn't even use the box for the salad stuff.

Sikh temples give out free hot food I think plus other church groups / homeless charities might do a day a week.

There’s some great ideas here, thank you.
the mason jar soup and electric cool box are brilliant. I’ll look at Jac Monroe 👍🏼
Unfortunately she’s out of her usual area so using friends cooking facilities means petrol ££
As far as I understand the hotel give nothing apart from breakfast.
Yes, I bloody hope contraception is Rick solid!

Do they have any family who can deliver hot food in a thermos or similar? Any community hubs?

Family help a lot Mon - Fri and relationships are strained.
Im just researching local services
Passing all your ideas on.

Has she got an Asda with a cafe nearby?

The meals in the cafe are so cheap they'd probably cost the same or less than buying convenience foods and trying to jerryrig cooking facilities. They do 'kids eat for £1' deal and looking at the menu online there's no requirement for an adult meal to be purchased to get that deal.

At all costs, she must avoid being thrown out of the emergency accommodation.

Its highly likely that they refuse all cooking in her room; for a host of HSE, environmental health, fire safety and insurance reasons, which the accommodation providers are legally obliged to enforce.

So, first she must check their rules and policy. Please, please, for her sake, don't encourage her to break or ignore them.

Cheap sandwich toaster and make the sandwiches at her mum's?

Other ideas would be

• rotisserie chicken or other hot deli foods if there's a supermarket nearby. If she has a thermal bag it will keep warm for a couple of hours, serve with coleslaw, salad, potato salad, flavoured pasta mug shot things or cous cous which can be made with just boiling water.
• cup a soup with lots of bread for dunking.

A couple of options could be:

• a snack plate with tomatoes, cucumber, hummus, crackers etc
• sandwiches
• salad
• cup a soup, instant noodles, mug pastas, couscous
• poridge pots

I think it would be helpful if she could make up a proper meal for the next day that is nice cold when she’s at family on the fri. Eg pasta salad, mixed bean salads, cook some veggie sausages for sandwiches.

Its also worth her googling for both warm spaces and homeless services in her area. If she can find somewhere that has a microwave that she can use I think that would give her a lot more options.

Is her child at school? If so would she feel confident to let other parents at school know what’s happening? I’d happily have a friend of my kids round for dinner every week if I knew they didn’t have cooking facilities.

FatAgain, yes Asda very near, thank you.

2Bazookas damn, good point. I don’t know if the hotel will allow cooking smells, Health and safety reasons etc. She very much knows she can’t get kicked out.

wildseas good ideas, thanks.
Cold pasta salad with protein is a good simple idea. No, child is only 18 months, luckily a very easy going little chap!

I’ve got her on to warm spaces and looking at other services

That's fab - you sound like a lovely friend.

My go-to is cous cous. It just needs boiling water and is healthy. Otherwise, food doesn’t need to be hot to be healthy. Hummous and bread and various veg to dip.