AIBU to ask which are the best recipe boxes for person with Dementia?

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Posting here for traffic.

I have a family member with Alzheimer’s who has always loved cooking. She has been using Hello Fresh which have been excellent because they have allowed her to maintain independence, to keep cooking and reminded her to eat. However, she is now struggling to follow the recipe cards because there is too much information on them and they are too busy. As a result it can take her 2-3 hours to prepare them and sometimes she misses steps.

Before we move to pre-prepared microwave meals, I was wondering if any mumsnetters could recommend some dementia friendly recipe boxes or post examples of recipe cards from other boxes to see which might be the most suitable.

Really want to support her to keep cooking and maintaining some independence for as long as possible. I am completely aware of the trajectory of dementia so know there will come a time when none of these boxes will be suitable but for now just want to see if there is something similar but that might be better.

Thanks

What an interesting idea, and a good one.

Does she have favourites? Could you create simpler versions of the recipe cards for those ones for her? I have to say I think I would skeet and email Hello Fresh themselves about this, though it would probably be years until they did anything about it.

I’m not sure this exists but as an alternative could you look at supermarket kit meals where everything is included and you basically just add the ingredients together? Perhaps make a meal plan and get the shopping list on repeat with a bit of variety.

sausages with ready mash and green veg
pre cooked chicken with curry kit, microwave rice and added or side veg
salmon baked with roast veg (pre prepared) and jacket or new potatoes

I hope you find something

Thanks for the suggestions.

I have written to Hello Fresh but haven’t yet had a response.

My mum had dementia and I think you need to change mindset not recipes. You’re trying to find a way of maintaining something familiar for longer which doesn’t always work unfortunately.

we used mindful chef and the recipes could not have been easier, so you could have a look at that compared to hello fresh and see if there’s a difference? If she can’t do those you need to make a more fundamental change.

My suggestion would be to get her some simple recipes (even from kids cook books) to batch cook. That way if it takes a couple of hours it doesn’t really matter, but she still gets the enjoyment from cooking and has healthy meals. You could join it up with an online food delivery, but she could do them once or twice a week, enjoy the process, but still have home cooked food when she wants it.

So good of you to not automatically go for ready meals and think of ways to maintain their independence and enjoyment of cooking.

Could you make simplified step by step instructions for a few of their favourites and laminate them then just order those on rotation.

The recipe cards are available in PDF form so, if you know in advance which ones she is ordering, you could download and get chatGPT to create a more friendly version.

(Similar to the ideas of you creating versions of her favourites, but this would just take minutes each week even if she hadn’t cooked it before).