I need to find non-processed meals for my MIL & wife. I'm caring for both of them & working full time. Meal prep needs to be easier. Ideas?

Do your wife and MIL want something different every meal? Mom had no real dietary restrictions; I had more (low sodium and low carb), so I cooked more to control our sodium intake than anything else. Frozen vegetables often have less salt added or can be purchased in no salt added versions if you cannot find a no or low salt added canned version. Mom had a sweet tooth and ate more carbs than I did. If we liked something my mother and I were willing to eat it again the next day, so I made a large pot of soup each week (rotating vegetable beef, chicken noodle, potato, and chili); we ate about half of it (usually one meal a day) with freshly baked bread (often cornbread) and I froze about half for upcoming weeks. Mom had pop-tarts for breakfast alternating with cereal and scrambled eggs, often with peppers and onions added (sometimes cheese and/or diced ham). An egg scramble (eggs scrambled with pepper and onions or ham and cheese) with toast and jelly was often my default meal when I didn't have the energy for cooking some more effort and time-consuming. I cooked one complete meal on Sundays and used the leftovers for our meals during the week. And some nights when I was too tired to cook, Mom loved several flavors of Healthy Choice Simply Steamers frozen dinners. My Mom loved fruit and sweets, so I kept fresh fruit available for snacks (often bananas, apples, and tangerines, cut portions of watermelon and cantaloupe) along with creme cakes (little icing) or cookies and the always favored ice cream. In my area, the chef option isn't available, but I would have taken it if it were.

My husband and I have no kids, so it's always been us two. We both want to eat reasonably healthy, but it became a pain and expensive to shop for a specific item each week, or make something and it not turn out right. Or it would go bad before we could eat it. Or something would come up that week and throw off the entire week's meals. And I'm not a gifted cook, so I need all the help I can get. :)

So, we've been using EveryPlate and so far we're fine with it. Is $38.00 a week, which is three meals (for two). I know buying the same items at the grocery store is cheaper, but it's actually saved us money. I no longer buy a bunch of food at the store that might not get used, and I don't have to keep running to the store to get something needed for a recipe that I forgot. You can also cancel a week's delivery if you're going to be away or have leftovers you need to finish up. You select items each week, there's usually 9-12 meals you can pick.

I have a pretty severe reaction to MSG, and I’ve found a lot of frozen meals that don’t contains any.

Have you done a Google search of “Frozen meals containing NO MSG”? You can also find ingredients lists by googling individual companies.

In my experience, food companies are careful when describing food allergies and sensitivities.

Hope this is helpful.

Being a homemaker for 45 years and having 'meal duty' for 7 people has taught me a LOT!

Make menus. Shop from those menu lists (and keep staples like soups and some healthy, high quality frozen meals on hand).

Saturday was prep day. I'd cook as much as I could, freeze what needed to be 'kept' and did a LOT of casseroles and crockpot meals.

I'm skimming, obviously, it took me years to work this out and there was always that occasional night when it was too exhausting to even think of putting something I'd already made in the oven!

Now,, as DH and I are retiring, we have used a couple of meal services. Handy, but still, a lot of the recipes require more prep than I want to do. Using these recipes, I buy for the same meal, but at a smaller cost. All the veggies can be prepped at the same time. (That's the biggest time factor). I spend a few minutes each morning thinking about dinner and get out the meat to thaw, if necessary, start the crockpot (yeah for Fall-I do a LOT of crockpot meals!) and even set out frozen rolls to rise. Often I make way more than we can eat and so I will call a neighbor and run dinner to them. I can't adapt to cooking for 2 instead of 7!

And yes, one night a week is the 'wild card' where we either go out or order in.

A favorite 'snacky' type of dinner is a chacuterie tray. Meats and speciality cheeses with a very thin cracker--maybe a dollop of a sweet jam. Lo-carb and filling. Dh can actually fix this!

Both DH and I are sensitive to MSG (gives us migraines) so we're super careful about what we eat.

I hope and pray I will never need MOW. I tasted one of my mom's and while it was 'edible' it was far from being 'good'. It sustains life, but that's about it.

Wow! What a great group this is. I got a lot of good information myself. Thank you.

I have worked with Meals on Wheels. There is an option to pay for the meals weekly if income is too high. As stated by Garden Artist it is not total household income, but the income of the individuals who need the meals. Also you can deduct medical insurance premiums, prescription drugs, and doctor costs. Some areas allow for incontinence supplies to be deducted. These deductions are from your monthly income to lower the individuals monthly income.

My Mom and Dad had a chef service come to their house when they no longer cooked. Meals were delivered weekly and they chose meals each week from the menu. I felt the service was reasonably priced.

If you are financially able, get large quantities of good quality ingredients at a store like Costco, or whatever nearest equivalent you can. Then have a single day you devote to cooking lots of meals. I do this. I can prepare, cook, and freeze a month’s worth of meals in a day. I control what is in them for our specific dietary needs.

I am not fond of cooking, either, so doing it all at once lets me have easy prep, microwaveable meals ready to go, with ingredients I controlled. It also lets you cut down on shopping trips. A vacuum sealer helps, but isn’t critical. Some things, like vegetable dishes, I will freeze separately so they can be quickly added to any other main course to give greater variety to the meals.

Buying in bulk, usually even using high quality organic ingredients, cuts the final cost far below buying any other way. Cooking all at once in a day gives you one mess, one cleanup, and one planning and prep session to do.

Mark, your background introduction is well-prepared, thorough and very helpful.   Thanks for taking the time to provide that as an introduction to your participation here.

A.   I have one concern and I'm wondering if someone hasn't given you erroneous information.  It's that  "We make too much for Meals on Wheels."   

Are you referring to the total household income?   In my experience, that wouldn't be the issue.   If any income threshold is applied, it would be for the elders who would be recipients of Meals on Wheels.  

Check with your local Senior Center on this.    I will caution you though that the meals aren't as good as they can provide under the circumstances, but they're not the worst either. 

B.   And specifically, what are the "special diets"?  Is one diabetic, or dysphagic?   The type of limitations by any physical issues might influence who you can hire to provide the meals.

C.    Unfortunately, MSG is like salt and is used prolifically in so many levels of meals.

I haven't specifically checked out these frozen meals, but Smart Ones claims not to use "artificial flavors", and "No artificial preservatives".  

https://www.eatyourbest.com/smartmade

D.   Something else you might try are the "healthy restaurants" in your area which claim and advertise their use only of real food ingredients.    You might be able to work out a delivery deal with them, especially since so many restaurants are using home delivery as a result of the pandemic.    (Be sure to raise the issue of refrigeration; I received a home delivery meal when our power was out for days, and it clearly hadn't been refrigerated.  But it was still warm from cooking.)

D.   Another long shot is if there are local hospitals that provide only nonpreservative meals, primarily from their own organic gardens.  Henry Ford Hospital does this.   It also used to have a cafeteria.  I don't know if it still does given the pandemic, or if there's any kind of home or take out prepared meal service, but if there are any progressive hospitals that are similar to Ford's offerings, it's worth a try.

Info on Ford Hospital and its pioneering method of providing food for its hospital and local residents:

https://www.henryford.com/locations/west-bloomfield/greenhouse   and

https://www.youtube.com/embed/_R9e_JbDLO8 for a quick greenhouse tour.
(I'm so envious when I see their greenhouse!)

E.    If you can find a cook, you can possibly find organic foods at a farmer's market as well.  

In Michigan, there apparently are organizations of organic growers.   I recently stumbled across this information.    And they have summer festivals.  It would take some research, but you might be able to locate one that not only sells organic produce directly, or has a restaurant as a side line.  I've seen these kinds of combinations on earlier This Old House episodes (long time ago though).

Another diversifying source for organic food:
https://granorfarm.com/

These are just examples of alternate sources.


I wish you well in your success to find what you need.

I have heard positives about Home Chef. It seems to provide healthy meals without extensive prep time which most of the others require. We personally had a negative experience with one mentioned here and my adult kids also had negatives such as small portions,alot of prep work and rules that border on ridiculous as to ordering in the future based on what you previously ordered. If you forget to place a future order they place it for you and you may find yourself with a box of food you may not desire. For example: We wanted to order scallops. Were told we couldn't that week because we hadn't ordered it before. We were sent a box of pork meals which we had never originally ordered and don't eat. I believe their system will send out less popular items.

If you live near a Trader Joe's or a Whole Foods there are options there. It may not be as cost effective but provides choices that taste good without great effort.

I think the idea of a personal chef is wonderful but depending on where you live may not be feasible. If it is and is within your budget that would be a wonderful solution. Covid may play into this scenario. I have a friend who has a restaurant and she presently laments the difficulty of finding staff for most positions. Perhaps working privately might be different. I would not know how to get connected with a chef for example but if I could figure it out I would utilize this option when my family visits. Anything to avoid the thesis that one daughter's grocery list becomes!

I have relatives who hired a personal chef to come in and make three weeks' worth of dinners at a time, then she froze them in individual containers. All they had to deal with was breakfast and lunch, and most of those meals contained enough to have the leftovers for lunch.

There are now so many meal plans that you can order on line and most of them are easy to prepare, all the ingredients are delivered to you. And there is a wide selection of meals to select from.
Freshly
Blue Apron
Hello Fresh
Those are just the ones I can think of off the top of my head.
They are NOT inexpensive.
Your best option is to do what many busy people do.
Plan several menus.
Shop for all the items you need.
Take a day or two on the weekend and cook.
Now portion your meals out and freeze the portions.
If you do it right you will make more than enough and the next week when you make more you will add to your stock pile of meals so you can pull out a variety at any time.
When I was caring for my Husband I can not tell you how many portions of soups, stews and other meals I had in the freezer. It made things so much easier for me even though it took a day or two to get it all done. Many times I did not have to cook at all during the week.

You can hire a personal chef to come in and prepare meals. They do a week or more, special dietary requirements, etc.

Take a look at Amy's frozen foods. IDK if they are MSG free, but they are vegan/vegetarian and I think offer gluten free varieties. Here's a link: https://www.amys.com/faqs