Recently I told you about my brand new IGA supermarket that recently opened up just around the corner from me.  The kind people at IGA Australia thought it would be a good idea to show you how easy and hassle-free it could be to surprise all the mothers in your family in one quick visit to IGA.

My IGA is less than 5 minutes from me, I can park at the front door and it’s filled with local and Australian products from one end of the store to the other. They stock the international brands too.  I dashed over to the IGA last night for cranberry sauce for my roast chicken dinner and I was in and out in less than 3 minutes.

I would have been out in a minute and a half but they put the cranberry sauce on the top shelf and I had to ask for help getting it down.  Seriously.  Do tall men ever buy the family’s cranberry sauce?  I think not and it should be on a shelf I can reach.

My mother passed away several years ago so I don’t have one of my own to celebrate Mother’s Day with. I do have a mother-in-law and in her area at the aged care facility, she lives with 15 other women and they ALL love to be spoiled.  I can walk in with a box of Ferrero Rocher chocolates and I’m like the pied piper walking down the hallway.

To show how easy it would be to make any mother happy, I went around the corner to the IGA today with all my new “mothers” in mind and here’s what I ended up with.  Since we can’t bring a proper meal to the nursing home, I went with an indoor picnic theme.  The ladies love it when someone brings in a food surprise.

For nibblies, Carolyn loves spicy food and I found these wonderful sweet chili sauce pistachios for her.  Not only will they be a hit to eat, shelling the nuts gives the women something to do with their hands. The nuts are just spicy enough to be interesting but not so hot they’ll need a glass of milk and begin fanning themselves.  We don’t want the oldies to start getting the vapours.

I had some leftover roast chicken and some leftover rolls and made a chicken salad and bought some cole slaw and this gorgeous white and sweet potato salad.  Can you tell I didn’t make that at home?  I can’t!  Job done.

For dessert it can’t get easier than tossing a plain layered sponge cake in the shopping cart, plate it up, dollop sweet whipped cream between the layers and top with whipped cream and strawberries.  This lovely cake took under 10 minutes from start to finish.  My mother-in-law loves anything with whipped cream and berries and little Margaret gets excited about fresh strawberries.

This indoor picnic for several women and the three of us took about 35 minutes to prepare and I think you’ll agree that dashing around the corner to your local IGA can make you a hero.  It certainly worked for me on my test-run Mother’s Day.

If whipping the cream is too much work on a busy day, these lovely cupcakes with pink icing are perfect for any mother.  My ‘other mother’ Mary loves everything pink so I chose these for her.  I did pinch a hunk off the one on the left after I finished the photos and it was moist and dense, just like you’d want it to be.  Mary will be missing one cupcake.

The IGA also had beautiful white chocolate mud cakes, dark chocolate mud cakes, caramel mud cakes, pies and tarts and sweets of all sorts to choose from.  I was spoiled for choice.

Now onto the real sweets!  Maybe these mothers might not appreciate Jelly Bellies but I certainly do so I picked up a package of cocktail flavours and I think they go really well with the pink cupcakes.  We’ll see how the ladies like them if I don’t eat them all first.

These are Joan’s favourite chocolates.  We buy her a big box every week and she shares them with her carers when they come in to make her bed or help her get dressed in the morning.  She doesn’t admit it but I suspect she eats a lot of these all by herself.

I could come up with heaps more ideas for surprising your someone special on Mother’s Day but you get the idea that it’s really easy.  Don’t beat yourself up by needing to be super people.  Just because you’re a great cook doesn’t mean you can’t get some help from your own IGA when you’re extra busy. My new found mothers had the best time when I arrived with all these goodies.

This post was sponsored by IGA Australia.