Packaged Love: Cooking through Crisis

ok. I’m still working on easy peasy food ideas to share some love with my sweet friend. Kathy is dealing with the tragic loss of her husband, so to recap I want to be able to provide some easy meals for her when she finds herself alone next week once her family has all gone home.

Kathy met her husband when she was 14 years old, he was the friend of her older brother. Since then, as I have learned about their life story it is very clear that they were soulmates. I’ve never heard her say a single negative thing about this man and I aspire to have a marriage like theirs. She speaks truth into my heart about what marriage means, the effort required to make a family whole even when her spouse is sometimes gone for long periods of time, and defines what love looks like.

Kathy has been a mentor to me as I have been spending the last few months reconfiguring my life. She inspires me to seek love every day and to really focus on how happiness impacts me and those around me. Their relationship is one of honesty, respect for one another, and hard work.

She has shared intimate details of her love story with me, in an effort to help me seek love in my own life. Simply thinking of her without her husband makes me cry and I  cannot imagine how she is dealing with the incredible loss.

That being said. Today, I made her chicken. I know it seems insignificant. I know it’s silly. I know that nothing can lessen her pain… but there is comfort in food. I love the thought that just a little kindness might shed some sunshine in an otherwise dark place in her life.

I found this quote online today that really spoke to me:

“Some foods are so comforting, so nourishing of body and soul, that to eat them is to be home again after a long journey. To eat such a meal is to remember that, though the world is full of knives and storms, the body is built for kindness. The angels, who know no hunger, have never been as satisfied.”
― Eli Brown, Cinnamon and Gunpowder

 

Love through food. Lots and lots of love.

Packaged Love: Freezable Meals for Grieving Families

When I answered the phone that evening, I wish I had been sitting down. Receiving the news that a dear friend of mine had just lost her husband in a fatal car accident made my heart hurt. It was sudden, unexpected and so unfair. My friend and her husband were recent empty nesters, just beginning on the journey of discovering themselves as a couple again. They were active church members and a true inspiration to me as I struggle to find my own feet in my relationships in this crazy adult world.

I have been struggling with trying to find a way to ease their burden, to help this family during this time of transition and crisis. I feel so helpless. Aside from praying, I’ve been searching for something that I could do.

It seems that food has always been a way to show love and comfort to a family who has lost a loved one.   Feeding people is a very tangible way to demonstrate our love to them at a time when we cannot really ease their emotional pain. After talking with the family I know that they have little time or ambition to cook for themselves, they have out of town guests, and they have limited energy. My friend is losing interest in eating, she’s in shock and her emotional state is obviously tumultuous.

I want to be a blessing to this family.  I know they will be overwhelmed with well-intentioned church folk dropping by, bringing food and so on. At least at first, but once the funeral is over and the extended family has gone home, I want to provide meals for my girlfriend that she can just reheat and eat, long after the chaos of this week is over. I want to be a blessing to her once the house is quiet and the loneliness settles.

So I’m researching some  recipes and ideas. It seems to me like the family may receive too many pasta-type casseroles. I want something unique, and delicious.

What are your thoughts?