Here is just a quick idea of how you can make a new mom’s day. In under half an hour of prep time you can make dinner as a New Mom Gift.
Recently, my son’s kindergarten teacher had baby #4! We have known the family for years because we go to the same church and daycare and we’re “country neighbors.” Her oldest is a little older than Sunshine. When the girls were in preschool, Sunshine was quite enamored. I guess my point here is that it was not just a teacher-student relationship. That was just the most recent relationship.
Our church has a ministry of providing meals to new mothers the week after the baby arrives. I had not seen anything about it recently or been called on to make a meal, so I thought it had kind of fallen by the wayside. But, I remembered how much I appreciated it when I had newborns in the house. So, at the close of the school year, I offered to make a meal at the family’s convenience. After a few back-and-forth emails, we decided that midsummer made sense. (It turns out our church still does make meals too, so it made even more sense to wait a little bit. Until as the new mom said, “people had forgotten about them.”)
New Mom Gift of Dinner
So yesterday, Sunshine and I whipped up a double batch of Homemade Instant Mac and Cheese, a plate of cut veggies and Three Ingredient Chocolate Mousse. In fact, the Chocolate Mousse is so simple that Sunshine made it from start to finish in about 5 minutes with only instructions from me as help.
Easy for You: Project Life
I used Becky Higgins’s Project Life Cards to quickly make a welcome note and label each food. On the Mac and Cheese I gave baking information and the ingredients. The same with the Chocolate Mousse. (They have a son with food allergies to nuts and eggs, so I wanted to be sure to let them know that both dinner and dessert were okay for him.) On the veggie plate I listed each item because I thought they might be interested to know that the cukes and cherry tomatoes came from local farm stands.
Easy for the New Mom
We put everything in disposable dishes so that there would be no need to worry about returning anything. The double batch of Homemade Instant Mac and Cheese fit perfectly into a foil lasagna pan. For reheating, I suggested 350 degrees until hot and bubbling. Probably 40-45 minutes because of the volume. A single batch would probably take about half an hour.)
I slid the paper plate of veggies into a gallon sized zipper style bag. Plastic wrap doesn’t stick well to paper plates and this also makes leftover storage easier because they already have a bag to put in the fridge. The mousse went into these paper bowls that we had left over from a party and the lids were actually intended for 16 oz plastic cups, but fit well enough for our purpose (to transport them down the road).
It took longer to drop it off (and oogle that baby!) than it did to prepare a three course meal!
Your Turn
So, the next time there is a new baby in your neighborhood, try this New Mom Gift of a three course meal in under half an hour. Or make it for your own family.
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