Echoing everyone's comments about how hard it is to learn new skills. Even with really well written simple instructions, sequencing can be such a huge problem. They may do step 1, possibly even step 2, but then they can lose their place and start trying to do step 1 again but get frustrated because it no longer makes sense.
I'm sure what you've written is excellent and clear as clear could be. I've been there myself writing and re-writing cheat sheets for how to use the phone, the washing machine, etc, etc. You go back and look at it and think "this couldn't be any clearer", but the sad truth is that their brains just don't process things the way we'd hope and expect.
I sympathise entirely. My dad survived entirely on apples and cheese sandwiches for too long, despite his fridge being full of lovely food.
Personally, I would favour oven meals (as opposed to microwave) because less can go wrong and it's a more familiar technology to even the most reluctant of chefs! I'd try and select ones that all require the same time and temperature and put a sticky label on each saying "Monday Lunch - 180deg - 30 mins". I'd also put sticky labels on the oven dials ("Just turn them both to the yellow dots, dad") and maybe try to source a simple 30-minute timer. I would also expect this system to probably fall apart on several occasions. and that the days of the week may be pretty meaningless.
Get some simple snacks with a long shelf-life and put them in a visible place so that if the system does fail there are other options. Those premade tuna salads in a foil tin are good, pot noodles, that sort of thing. Not ideal, nutritionally speaking, but better than just a sandwich.
I'm sure what you've written is excellent and clear as clear could be. I've been there myself writing and re-writing cheat sheets for how to use the phone, the washing machine, etc, etc. You go back and look at it and think "this couldn't be any clearer", but the sad truth is that their brains just don't process things the way we'd hope and expect.
I sympathise entirely. My dad survived entirely on apples and cheese sandwiches for too long, despite his fridge being full of lovely food.
Personally, I would favour oven meals (as opposed to microwave) because less can go wrong and it's a more familiar technology to even the most reluctant of chefs! I'd try and select ones that all require the same time and temperature and put a sticky label on each saying "Monday Lunch - 180deg - 30 mins". I'd also put sticky labels on the oven dials ("Just turn them both to the yellow dots, dad") and maybe try to source a simple 30-minute timer. I would also expect this system to probably fall apart on several occasions. and that the days of the week may be pretty meaningless.
Get some simple snacks with a long shelf-life and put them in a visible place so that if the system does fail there are other options. Those premade tuna salads in a foil tin are good, pot noodles, that sort of thing. Not ideal, nutritionally speaking, but better than just a sandwich.
