Food/meal prep
Hello, this is my first time posting, and I've appreciated learning from you all. I have a lot of concerns but thought I would start first with meals.
TLDR: How do you make sure your parents who live alone are eating well? Does anyone have recommendations for meal delivery services or helpful routines for meal prep?
A quick overview for context: My mother is 83 and living alone for the first time in her life in the house she shared with my stepfather, who passed away in late 2024 from advanced Alzheimers. Then her sister, who she was very close to and her only sibling, passed away in late 2025. On top of that, she already had macular degeneration in one eye and it recently spread to the other eye and now she's having a lot of trouble with her vision and cannot drive. She still does have some vision but can't read easily, etc. She also had a bad fall right after my stepfather died, and can be pretty unsteady on her feet.
I go and help her with paperwork and take her shopping and get her out of the house several times a week. She does have some friends in the area and a few activities she attends each week so is able to get some help and get out a few times a week apart from me.
We are looking into assisted living (and she is starting to get on board with it), but it will take a while for us to get to that point since there's a house to sell in order to finance it, and in the meantime she needs to eat.
She is capable of cooking but doesn't have a lot of interest in cooking meals for herself. Understandably, she is depressed about everything that has happened the past few years. And although I feel guilty for not moving in with her or doing even more, I live about 40 minutes away and have my own home to maintain and things I'm involved in, and I think it would be a bad idea to do that for a variety of reasons.
I've been agonizing about what to do about the food situation since she doesn't seem to care much about eating unless we go out to eat, and then she has a good appetite. So most days when I visit we go out for one meal, but I know at home she mostly eats muffins for breakfast and sandwiches for lunch and as for dinner, I'm not always sure. Last week when we were shopping I got her to buy a rotisserie chicken and frozen vegetables and some other food that she can quickly heat up in the microwave.
I've thought if I were a better daughter (!) I would be making and packing meals for her every week but I haven't been able to motivate myself to do that. I have looked into a bunch of meal delivery services, but they often get bad reviews. And even if we ordered something like that, I'm not sure how she would get them in the house so I would probably need to have them delivered to my house and then I could bring them to her, which is an option. I recently suggested to her that on one of the days I come, we could shop and I could cook/prep meals for her for the week at her house.
Does any one have suggestions for what to do to make sure your parents are eating well if you are not living with them?