Tips for hiring a cook or meal delivery person
What should you consider when hiring someone to cook or deliver meals for a senior or homebound person? Julie Olson-Tobias from REAL Services suggests:
- • If it’s a homemaker service, does the homemaker know how to cook? Or does the worker simply know how to heat things up?
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- • Be aware that you may get different assigned homemakers over time, as the company’s staff and schedules change.
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- • If meals are being delivered and simply dropped off, can the client physically lift the items? And is there enough room in the fridge or freezer?
- • If you hire a service that offers meals for anyone (not specifically for seniors), consider how large the portion sizes are. Do they match the client’s appetite, which can be smaller? How many of the meals will the client realistically eat, so there’s no waste?
Contacts
Lisa Youngquist wanted to spice up her meals.
She’d loved the companionship that the Meals on Wheels volunteers brought whenever they made deliveries. And she definitely didn’t want to go back to the time before that, when for three to four years, she’d reheat a frozen, store-bought meal every day — good luck finding the veggies.
She wanted to eat well. It helps her failing body parts that, at just 66, ache so much that she spends most of the day in bed, soothed by heating pads. She has a condition that keeps her from absorbing Vitamin D.
Enter Nicky Foust, who in February had just started a local franchise of the business Chefs for Seniors. She shops for groceries and then cooks meals for clients in their own homes — in this case, the same house where Youngquist has lived for 30 years.
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“The house smells wonderful,” Youngquist attested after Foust had just finished cooking baked apples, spinach mushroom quiche, black beans and sausage and pork fried rice.
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