Zitis attack! Meal Train fights back!

This here's a post both for friends and cancer families.

You know what's really nice to do for someone when their kid is going through treatment? Bringing over a home-cooked meal; it's pretty awesome. Whoever said the way to a man's heart is through his stomach hasn't eaten with me. Eat, eat, be merry. Burp and eat some more.

If you would like to organize meals for a family, let's start with the actual organizing. As of this moment, consider yourself freed from countless Reply All's. Spare your friends the agony of having to add their names to a list with dates only to get 14 emails simultaneously with 14 different people signed up for the same day. It's painful to check emails on these days when all you want to do is something helpful.

Get thee on over to Meal Train. With a quickness.

It takes a minute to register. Do not let this put you off. It is well worth your time.

For the organizer, you will get to set up a calendar and select the dates you want food to be brought to the recipient. My recommendation? Every other day. We were so lucky to have people bring us food every single day, but there's only so much space in a refrigerator. Fortunately, we have a large freezer and were able to save our leftovers. But not everyone has a large freezer. And most people bring a large enough meal that there are ample leftovers for the following night.

(I love leftovers. They are my favorite breakfast. Skip the Cheerios, pass the Tuna Helper.)

For the people participating in your meal train, you will be able to see what date everyone has selected and what dates are still available. No more reply all mishaps. What's the bestest is that you can see what everyone plans on bringing.

Disclaimer: I am not in any way ungrateful for the outpouring of casseroles we received. We loved each and every one of them.

But, damn. We got a lot of baked ziti.

And by a lot, I mean more specifically nineteen. This number does not include the baked rotini, baked spaghetti, stuffed shells, or lasagna. I am honored that we even have nineteen different people who would want to bring us dinner. It's just...nobody had any way of knowing how much baked ziti we were getting.

We really like Italian food. It was all yummy. But baked ziti only comes in one size: gigantic. And one baked ziti was enough to get us through at least three dinners. Nineteen baked zitis without a freezer will make you constipated.

And cancer parents, if you do happen to get a lot of baked pasta, keep some jars of pasta sauce and mozzarella on hand. Sometimes the freezer will make baked ziti kinda wonky if you leave it in there a little longer than you should, but extra sauce and cheese makes all ziti equal.

Soooo...take a moment to read what others are bringing when you consider what meal to prepare. Just sayin'.

Another cool thing about Meal Train is that you can see both the favorite meals of the recipient as well as the dislikes and allergies. So if the family doesn't care for tube-shaped meat products, you can feel confident in your decision to not bring over hot dogs.

No worries about getting lost to the family's house. You can find the address as well as a map in the side-bar of the site. And not only will you know what time to drop off the food, the family will know what time to expect you, since the organizer gets to input the preferred drop-off time.

Meal Train will email you when it's your turn to start cooking. So no excuses about signing up to bring someone a meal and forgetting about it. It can really suck to have multiple hungry preschoolers crying for food when you get home from a day at the hospital and you're just not sure when to call it and defrost the ziti.

I swear, I am not getting paid by Meal Train to write this. I just really dig me some Meal Train.

There's even an option to enter "Special Instructions." Maybe something cool, like, Knock three times on the bathroom window or Wear a trench coat with a red rose on the lapel. Or just, Please don't ring the doorbell, my kid is sleeping off some chemo.

People like to bring food. We all like to eat food. We all love it that you are taking the time to pamper us with your secret family recipes. (We all get sick of hospital food, except maybe the extra special Ninja sushi rolls from the Duke cafeteria, but that's another post entirely.)

A friend of mine says she saved her maternity pants and turned them into "Thanksgiving pants." We should all be so lucky to be able to break out the Thanksgiving pants when the comfort food rolls in. Let the emotional eating commence!