I prefer certain varieties of Progresso soups to homemade versions (intensely dislike chicken noodle soup). different people have different tastes. Post # 53’s soup recipe sounds horrible, tasteless and lacking in so much. Not at all filling (needs protein and fats). Putting together ingredients (plus many more spices!) is work.
OP- arthritis is hard to deal with. To include variety you can make cheese or PBJ sandwiches the night before with frozen bread (we always keep ours frozen because it would spoil at our usage rate)and keep in the refrigerator.
Those baby sized carrots would be nice for people whose hands have trouble preparing the whole ones. Getting your H to do prep work for you so all you have to do is take the servings. People often do not realize the financial costs of a disabling disease is so much more then the costs of medicines and other health care stuff. So many things we take for granted need to be done with the convenience packaging.
I like to buy things like prepackaged hummus or all my stores lately (I love Sprouts) has a box with 4 items. EG olives, hummas, pita and chicken. Or strawberries, cottage cheese, crackers and brie. Etc etc. Range from $3-5.
To add to @abasket Costco list
Bananas- Costco has great prices on bananas. You can add it to yogurt, eat plain or one of my favorites is to top it with almond butter.
Nuts- a good source of protein. Look for raw or lightly salted. I buy the big bag of almonds but they also sell individual bags of nut assortments. The big bags are in one section, the small bags are usually in the snack section.
If you go on a Saturday you should be able to try a lot of samples.
Eggs- great egg prices
Yogurt- large container of plain or individual size Chobani or Fage depending on the store.
Also at Costco I make sure to check the expiration dates. In the produce section that usually means trying to get into one of the lower boxes.
I don’t care for the Costco soups or canned soup. But if you don’t mind them buy yourself a hydroflask brand soup sized container. It will keep your soup hot.
But I 2nd what someone else said about making your lunch right after dinner with leftovers. I like to make extra for lunch. I like to place a grain in the bottom f a container and add leftovers on top.
Ok. We’re going tomorrow night or Saturday. Is Saturday better? I saw something about samples.
I’m buying, roommate and Mr R are cooking. As I’ve said before, it’s hard for me to manipulate things so I’m just going to have to be conscious of not doing anything that requires me to use a knife or something while at work. Even now, I’m not typing. I’ve been using voice to text for a while. Typing hurts too bad
I’m a vegetarian but I’ll eat things like beef broth. I loveeeee French Onion soup. One of the reasons I could never go full vegan.
Ok so far I have:
-Soup. I’ll try a few different kinds.
-Bananas
-Fresh mozzerella (100% on board with this!)
-Individual hummus or guacamole containers
-Asian chicken salad wraps - refrigerated prepared food, usually the back wall of the store near the rotisserie chickens (get one of those for dinner(s)! - $4.99! (I think this is something roommate will like. Mr R LOVES chicken but can’t tolerate any spice at all )
-Morning Rounds - great w/pb or pb and j spread on them! (What is this??)
I’ll add in various other fruits and veggies since I do love my fruits and veggies. Apples + peanut butter is a good one- I’ll just have to have someone cut it for me the night before
Don’t let that price scare you…they are 4.99 for several of them (10 or 12?)
It may not be year around but Costco also carries individual bowls of frozen french onion soup in the frozen section of the store - 6 bowls I think per pack!
And if you like canned soup do check the canned aisle for multipacks of canned soup at good prices.
Samples are likely to be more plentiful I’d say after 11am and before 5 or so? Costco has kind of weird weekend hours - not open past 6pm???
I’ve had some brand of the individual frozen onion soup (from my market) and it’s good. I think it also has the bread and some cheese topping it, just like real, iirc…
Thing about soup cans is Mr R or roomie could open it and pour it into a microwaveable container for you to take. I think the frozen onion soup is supposed to stay frozen but you could pop it into the office freezer. Otoh, mine needed to be baked. Don’t know if there was a MW option.
Trader Joe’s has a frozen onion soup that is good. I prefer to heat it in the oven for 40 minutes, but you can also microwave it. It comes sealed in plastic and you would need someone to open it for you, but that’s not a huge obstacle. If someone opened it for you at home, they could put it in a microwave safe container and it could go in the fridge until microwave time.
I often have apples, cheese and crackers for lunch. Pretty easy, especially now it’s apple season. Just toss an apple or two, some cheese and some crackers in the sack and you’re done.
@BunsenBurner 6 PM is just an odd time to me. I am used to most stores being open until 8 or 9 even on Saturdays.
It’s not a judgment, just an oddity. To be honest, I’d much rather stores in general have shorter hours and most should be closed on major holidays. I said earlier in the thread somewhere that I’ve been meaning to start shopping there in large part because of how their employees are treated.
I’m going to try Trader Joe’s onion soup too.
Soup is a really good idea because I can eat a little or lot and if I have to leave it for more than a day or so in the fridge, it’s fine.
I know you are not judging, Romani. I too was unhappy about that… we got used to it. It does make our Saturdays more efficient. We hit Costco early on Sundays when folks are in churches.
Mr. B loves to sample the foods offered at Costco. Oftentimes, they demo several products - like garlic butter smeared on a Dave’s Killer Bread. Yum.
