jessica dussault

Ideas for food to bring your friends

Date
24 February, 2026
Category
food
Tags

It has been about a year and a half since I had a kid. Even though everything went as well as it could have gone and we had an easy, easy baby, we were still very sleep deprived, weary, and spent our leisure time washing bottles and doing laundry. So much laundry!

We had a lot of lovely friends and family who brought us food during the first several weeks. We were grateful for each and every one of them. Recently, I brought dinner to the family of a friend recovering from major surgery and I found myself reflecting on what types of things had worked best for our situation and if it would translate to theirs.

Whether you are bringing meals to the tired parents of a newborn, a person experiencing health issues or grief, or whatever the situation, here are my suggestions for ways you might make life easier for them.

Ready to eat

Food that is served room temperature or brought at an edible temperature around meal time is wonderful stuff. Whether that's a charcuterie tray, pickup from your favorite restaurant, or a friend bringing over stew they just pulled out of their slow cooker, we were pretty thrilled anytime food showed up that was ready to go and only required silverware.

Washed and cut up fruits and prepped veggies are one of the stars of this category, as well. Love to get some fresh food in the mix.

If you're bringing food to someone with a baby, consider foods that are not only ready to eat, but can be eaten with only one hand.

Examples:

Almost ready to eat, few dishes

One of our friends' dads, bless his heart, loves to cook for people. And he loves babies. AND, we learned, he loves intricate meals. He brought us a number of delicious things during those first few weeks. Often his drop offs would come with instructions like "after warming the sous-vide bag in hot water, start melting butter for the gravy..." Reader, we did not make the gravy, although whatever the liquid was still tasted great over the rest of the plate!

We typically were able to muster the energy to preheat the oven. Any food that we could throw into the oven or microwave was a wonderful thing. Bonus points if the container it came from could be used, rather than having to dirty up one of our pans. EXTRA bonus points if we didn't need to return the containers to someone and could just chuck them or adopt them into our own stash. Sorry planet :(

When I'm running on fumes, it turns out that I would rather skip eating if a lot of work is required to get to the food. We already had a pile of pump parts and multi-piece bottles to wash, you know? We even struggled to eat salad kits. You gotta turn it into a bowl, and then later you gotta wash that bowl? Phew.

Examples

Easy on the cheesy

Listen, comfort food is great but there's only so much mac and cheese a person can eat before they start feeling like mac and cheese. Years ago, some of my minister friends had a baby and their congregation kept them well supplied with "church basement potluck" foods. You know the type: lasagna, sausage and egg breakfast casseroles, jello salads, cheesy potatoes...Their digestive systems were not used to such rich fare, and my friends were thrilled when something like falafel and hummus with veggies showed up.

My suggestion above that casseroles can be thrown straight into the oven remains a valid one, but you might want to mix it up with something a little more fresh, too. Instead of a green bean casserole made with cream of mushroom soup and potato chips, maybe just gently sautéed green beans?

Non-dinner items

Dinner is one of my top three favorite meals of the day, and I loved when people brought it to us. However, if you're bringing food for others, keep in mind that they probably eat at other times of the day, too. Breakfast, lunch, and in the case of a new baby, middle of the night snacks, are also important! You don't want to know how many muffins I took out of the freezer and microwaved at like 3 am those first few weeks.

My parents brought us staples here and there which was pretty helpful. It's not that we couldn't go to the store ourselves, but since people were bringing us meals we really only needed milk, bread, and fruit most of the time.

Examples:

Gift cards

It took me by surprise how many people were generous enough to send us Door Dash gift cards and similar. We had never used those apps before and ended up postponing using them gift cards simply because we didn't have the various accounts set up, nor did we know how it all worked, to be honest. I think this might be a unique problem for us, as surely plenty of other people must use these services to keep them in business?

Anyway, I'm hoping that this post, while probably not terribly novel, has been helpful in giving you a couple ideas should you find yourself in the situation of wanting to show someone you care through food.