I took 6 months off to be with my daughter who was going through cancer treatments. My friends were just great. They invited me for meals. So what I did was I cooked up a turkey, dressing, gravy, veggies, and mashed potatoes and delivered dinners mid week to friends who were working and enjoyed not having to come home and cook dinner.
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I love to cook, so for Christmas I will buy ground beef and potatoes when they are on sale and make up meat loaf ahead and freeze it. Then the day before Christmas I make up my favorite mashed potato recipe and put them in a pyrex casserole dish and present the meat loaf and mashed potatoes as a gift.
Rather than giving more stuff to family and friends it can be fun to make and give a variety of food gifts, from sweets to soup mixes. This page contains some food gift ideas for Christmas.