Yes, if it says you can take them "with" meals then you can do food at the same mouthful :-) Whatever is easiest for you. Usually pills are supposed to be taken with meals anyway so there's some "buffer" to your stomach dissolving and before they get into your system.

Practice can help; do you take a vitamin? Get a large multi vitamin to take each day and "practice" by figuring out how to take that. Then just about any pill should be doable according to what you learn and how well you come to get "comfortable" with taking pills.

Most pills are usually not easy to "chew" and taste awful but they're not "fragile" so I treat them "rough" and businesslike, just "accept" they're going down whether they like it or not :-) What's the worst that can happen if you have a difficult time with it? It will taste bad. So do brussels sprout :-) So what?