"food delivery" news and stories

When a friend's daughter was hospitalized recently, offers to help the family poured in. "What can we do for you?" we all asked. "Can we bring you some food?" The offers were heartfelt, and the meals truly appreciated, but sometimes taking the phone calls and organizing the home food delivery was overwhelming for a family already overwhelmed with the health care of their child. Enter website TakeThemAMeal.com, which makes simple work of bringing food to those who need it.

Founded in 2007 by Adina Bailey and Scott Rogers, a pair of Virginians who designed the site amid a friend's health crisis, Take Them A Meal lets you easily provide a wish list for your loved one, a simple calendar where people can choose the dates they'll cook and deliver food (as well as list the dish they'll bring), and the address of and directions to the delivery location. One quick step allows the person administering the site to send emails to all who may be interested in participating.

Now, my friend has twice-weekly meals lined up for a couple of months, and she never had to pick up the phone. Wherever there's a need -- an elderly family member, a too-busy new mom, a noncooking college student, a family that's suffered a loss -- Take Them A Meal can help spread the love.

You had to work late. The traffic on the commute home was horrible. You're tired. You're hungry. But you've got to get dinner for the family on the table now. What do you do?

You could resort to picking up a bucket from the Colonel on your way home, or call for pizza delivery, but you're better than that, right? Apparently, you are, according to a study by UCLA's Center on Everyday Lives of Families that did the first academic study to track American families moment by moment as they make dinner. They had expected to see a lot more takeout in working families but what they really saw was that 70% of the households in the study cooked at home. However, these "home-cooked" meals heavy reliance on "convenience foods."

However, these convenience foods, things that augment home cooking, didn't necessarily make dinner preparation any faster or easier. In fact, the difference in time to prepare dinner between a household that relied on convenience foods like boxed mixes, packaged vegetables, and pre-made stirfries and a household that made everything from scratch, was not statistically significant.

Really? You mean all this time I've been using Hamburger Helper, and I could have made lasagna from scratch in the same amount of time?!?!

Source

Mail-order steaks aren't necessarily anything new or innovative. We've seen Omaha Steaks, I've tried Montana Legend, but this one just makes me laugh.

Donald Trump has his own line of premium steaks. Did I miss a season of 'The Apprentice' where the winner got to run a new food business for The Donald?

Available from the Sharper Image, the Classic Collection contains two Filet Mignon steaks, two "Cowboy" Bone-In Rib Eye steaks, and 12 Trump Steaks Burgers. Nothing unusual about that selection, right?

Except that it costs $200! Good grief. Mr. Trump better deliver it himself for that price.

Do you go to the library to read and do research or to eat and drink?

That's the question that students and other visitors to the W.E.B. DuBois at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst will have to ask themselves. Seems that so many people are shunning the library in favor of doing research at home on their computers. So the library has thought of ways to get people in the door again, and some of these ideas prove that it's not your father's library. Besides having cellphone isolation booths (which I would think are as much for other patrons than the cellphone user), they're also putting in a hip cafe where the circulation used to be, and a lounge. You can get coffee, soft drinks, pastries. You can even get food delivered to the library if you want! Add to that new bistro tables and cool lime green arm chairs (and the fact that it's open 24 hours a day during the week) and you have some place you might actually hang out in.

This could be a new trend? I mean, how long before a Starbucks opens at your local library?

Has anyone tried ordering food online yet? I'm talking about ordering food from someplace local, like a pizza place or a restaurant or take-out Chinese. I haven't done it yet (all the food I want to eat is either already in my house or I'll just call and go get it), but several Boston college students do it a lot.

As an experiment for The Boston Globe (the students got a free meal out of it), they all ordered food online at 8pm and waited to see who would deliver the food first. Here are the results. Is the online process tedious or easy? Did the food get there in the time advertised? Does it arrive hot? (Make sure you check out the links in the middle of the article for a rundown of the best services.)

Readers, do you order food online like this? What have your experiences been?