Just one week after birth and feeling very overwhelmed. Shira Fisher* was thrilled when her neighbors assured that they’d send over a full Shabbos meal. “Friday morning I was looking forward to getting everyone’s deliveries” she related. “At 9am the doorbell rang- a neighbor dropped off a potato kugel. Smelled great! An hour later - another potato kugel and then another. I ended up with 13 potato kugels but nothing else!”

And the neighbors no doubt all thought they were being enormously helpful.

“We were having a medical crisis with one of our children and were released from the hospital on Thursday” recalls Chana Pick. “I struggled to pull together a simple Shabbos. One hour before Shabbos when I’d finally succeeded a neighbor brought over a container of frozen chicken soup. Eight hours before it would have been a lifesaver; at this point it was too late to be much of a help.”

Make no mistakes: All food is appreciated and even if it’s is not useful at the moment it will come in handy during the following week. But since we’d all like our edible offerings to be instantly and perfectly helpful Family First spoke with women from London and Lakewood Brooklyn and Baltimore Chicago South Africa Israel and Australia to discover how to make our gifts of food even more powerful and helpful.

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