Eating and safe food storage

[IDrinkAndISewThings]

Hi everyone, I'm looking for a bit of advice from those who've experienced trouble ensuring their relative with dementia eats properly?

My mum was diagnosed with Alzheimer's around 18 months ago, and lately has completely lost the ability to follow a recipe, and struggles to make the meals she's always made from memory (misses ingredients/steps, can't organise the task anymore)
She's been managing to feed herself generally ok - cereal for breakfast, a sandwich for lunch, always has snacks and biscuits in house, and main meal tending to be some pizza, chips and a pie or quiche or chicken Kiev, you get the idea - not hair cuisine but calorie heavy food, which she needs as she's skin and bone and has very little appetite for food.

Lately I've realised that her ability to store food correctly is questionable at best. It started with refrigerating things that don't need it - eg unopened tinned goods, microwave rice pouches etc. Then there was the milk being 10 days out of date (she was going by smell, but I smelled it and what she thought was fine was awful). And now today I've found half a defrosted frozen chicken pizza in the cereal cupboard , a couple of days old and waiting to be eaten another night. She would not be argued with that it wasn't safe to eat, and got very narked with me when I tried to insist she throw it away in case it made her ill. Although she lacks the vocabulary now to say it, she thinks I'm being precious and frivolous to throw it away.

The alternatives seem not to work. Meals on wheels? Won't wait in. Frozen meal deliveries? Won't store them properly and portions too large. Supermarket ready meals? Complains they're too big portions, and again, storage. I'm at a loss.

I live in the same street, I work part time, have two young kids (6&3) and my sister lives In Australia so is no help. It feels like the only solution is for me to cook for her daily and deliver it to her, but the practicalities of that just seem overwhelming when I struggle to keep our own household organised (husband works 12 hour days with an hour commute each side so not around much for childcare or support)

Has anyone got any tricks or pearls of wisdom for me? I don't yet claim carers allowance as mostly she gets by on her own, she drives still, can go to the shops, visit her brother, my main uses seem to be her plentiful doctors/hospital runs, charging her bath seat, and fixing her tv when she turns it off, oh. And doing her pills. I feel like I'm in this limbo period where her demands on me are high, but not yet enough to justify carers allowance that would allow me the money to afford a little local childcare so I could attend to her needs better than I can now.

Sorry, this is vast and rambling, just feeling a bit stuck with what the best way forward is.

I think she justifies carers allowance! For ready meals could you look at children's ones? Smaller portions may be more suitable. With an elderly auntie that was like this I used to distract her and mum threw away all the mouldy food! Would your mum know food had gone if she didn't see you remove it?

Yes, unfortunately she'd notice stuff going missing. This is the tricky with mum, I'd say she's early-mid stage just now - forgetful, but I'd say the disorganised thinking, losing her words etc are further progressed than memory loss, if that makes sense?
Children's ready meals might be a good shout, they tend to be healthier than some of the adult alternatives too, more veg, less salt. I think I might just have to bear her wrath regarding binning 'risky' food.
I'm seeing a carers advice organisation on Friday to sort out attendance allowance (her DLA got phased out and we missed the deadline to get transferred onto PIP) so I shall see what they say about carers allowance.

My mum went through a stage where she just wouldn't eat as she stopped recognising food , compounded by my dad having to learn to shop and cook.
The solution turned out to be eating at the pub everyday. They go to a Hungry Horse type place which is very cheap, and she has a childrens meal everyday. The same meal, come hell or high water, but its £3 a day and as much as she will eat. They've done this for years now.
But their carer also chucks all out of date food, keeps an eye on stock levels (dad was buying 4 pints of milk everyday and paying no attention to when they had 4 unopened bottles), and makes them a sandwich or something for tea.

When mum had lost a lot of weight, clotted cream ice cream gave her protein and fat in a format she could manage

My dad had Wiltshire Farm Foods. They do small portions & have a huge range. If she won't store them properly could you have them delivered to you & drop one in each day? It might still be a nuisance but at least you wouldn't be having to cook an extra meal each day.

There is a company that does small ready meals that don't have to be kept in the fridge. I can't recall the name, but if you google it I'm sure you'll find them.

Does she have any formal carers visiting? It sounds like one visit a day just to her food intake would be helpful and take the pressure off to? How is she with medication?

You could try "Oh - this needs to be eaten today - mind if I take it for my tea?" and throw it away at your house.

Carer's allowance - person you're caring for must already be in receipt of a benefit indicating they need care - so you may need to wait till she's got her attendance allowance. And you need to be earning less than £123 a week after tax, NI and "expenses".

She sounds as if she needs to be in some sort of supported accommodation where she no longer needs to manage her own meals.

Watch out for the "biscuit diet" - it starts seeming easier just to eat a few biscuits for breakfast or tea rather than mess about with cereal or sandwiches. That's what happened to my dad. I became aware that biscuit stocks needed to be replenished more and more often.