What Happens When Mom Is Sick and Can't Cook??

Arev and Sarah Soultanian, 1940

One of the crummiest things about having food allergies (or if you're following a "real-food" diet) is you can't rely on pre-packaged food during difficult times... or often ANY food not made in your own home.  Thousands of moms have bravely taken on the challenge of making every meal from scratch... but what happens when mom is sick and can't cook?

At our house, we tend to fall back on breakfast foods.  The boys can make themselves rice cakes with SunButter and honey, or oatmeal with fruit, or even GF frozen waffles, if we're lucky enough to have a box in the freezer.  If dad is home, he makes a mean veggie pasta, but dad travels a lot, so sometimes he's not around at dinnertime.  (I can usually scrape up something for lunch, but dinner is another story.)

We can't order out for pizza (gluten and dairy), or chinese (gluten and soy), or italian (gluten).  The local supermarket's prepared meals don't have ingredients listed on them, and their staff generally is not familiar with the recipes, so we can't really take a chance on those, plus if I'm not well enough to cook, I'm generally not well enough to drive to the store!  We've found a few frozen meals at Whole Foods that work for some of our allergies, but not all of us.  So, God forbid I'm sick for more than a day... we really don't have a lot of options.

What do you do at your house?  Do you have a go-to meal that you can whip up even when under the influence of flu-like symptoms and heavy meds?  Does your husband ride to the rescue?  Can your kids pull together a basic dinner?  What store-bought items have you been able to use?

Please leave a comment and share with us what you do when you're sick and can't cook.  Something tells me we can all use some help and inspiration!

Shared with Monday Mania at The Healthy Home Economist and Pennywise Platter at The Nourishing Gourmet and The Homemaking Link-Up at Raising Homemakers and Real Food Wednesday at Kelly the Kitchen Kop and Family Time Tuesday at Celebrating Family and Freaky Friday at Real Food Freaks and Anything Goes at Bacon Time and the Gallery of Favorites at Premeditated Leftovers.