Taking food into hospital - suggestions?

[spacedonkey]

My sister will be in hospital for the next 5 days or so, and I want to take some decent and nutritious food in for her (she is dreading the hospital food). Fruit obviously, but I'd like to take other things in as well, and I'm having trouble thinking of things that won't perish horribly. I'll take it in on a daily basis, but I doubt there'll be any fridge or reheating facilities there. Ideas?

Hospitals are very very funny about this kind of thing.
They wont reheat/heat ANY THING at all...ever.
They will store things like yoghurts fruit juices in a fridge but only for 24 hours or so.
Fruit and wrapped foods (sweets etc) is all that they recommend.

when i was in, my dh brought me up macaroni cheese wrapped in a tea towell, it was still warm and i ate the lot!

fruit isn't always a good idea, depends how hard it to to reach the toilet and everyone takes it. Think small and tasty - maybe yoghurt or an individual trifle, chocolate bars or other sweets (newberry fruits, mmmm), small cans of tinned fruit, pain au chocolate maybe? Don't forget some plastic spoons as it can take ages to find any Hospital food isn't always terrible but a little top-up is very welcome.

With my mother we actually took small baby food jars at one stage. You can heat them with boiling water in a thermos flask and some of them are very tasty. A thermos flask is an essential for anyone in hospital so you can keep a hot drink for when you want it.

The last thing I want to do is give her food poisoning!

I remember when I was in hospital after having dd a friend brought me in a parkin cake she had made that was fantastically filling, tasty and nutritious and impervious to boiing hospital conditions. Maybe I'll look up a recipe for that!

cool bag and some of those frozen things that go in it ?

then you could pack it with sandwiches/pasta salads/fruit/choc etc and it shouldn't get too warm.

You could take the frozen thingymebobs home with you each time to free freeze.

Or put a bottle of water in the freezer and take that, then she will have cool water as well when it defrosts.

flapjacks? those tiny individual tins of tuna you can open with a ring pull plus some nice fresh bread rolls (plus sachets of mayo). pots of garlicky olives. punnet strawberries/raspberries (obviously have to be eaten quickly so they don't perish )

Good idea - I have a cool bag at home. It's so hot she probably won't want to have hot food in any case. I can take her some salady things, some nice bread and fruit. Maybe some dried fruit to snack on as well, although I'll check first whether that might have an adverse effect on her bowels. She's having a hysterectomy tomorrow but I am visiting her tonight, so I'll ask if there are certain foods to avoid.

ooh olives - brilliant idea

iron rich foods after ops, so chocolate (felafel?) and even sneak in some guinness...

oh falafel are my favourite food in the world! Some green and blacks probably wouldn't go amiss either

maybe you could have a word with the hospital catering dept & they could out-source to you..

i do wish saint jamie would do something about hospital catering

where loyd failed? i bet he would (but jools would divorce him !)

lob some small plastic bottles of orange juice in freezer too, as it helps absorption of iron & is incredibly refreshing when icy cold

I wish I had one of them juicers so I could take fresh fruit n veg juices in

Definitely flapjacks/trophy bars; sourdough bread eg Village Bakery Pain de Campagne keeps in this weather much better than yeast-leavened bread; teeny jar of Marmite; Connetable do yum little tins of sardines if she wants to really ingratiate herself with her fellow inmates...

dried fruit - mango, blueberries, cranberries. some sachets of herbal tea (I'm sure they'll let her have hot water)