Dealing With Meals for the Rest of the Family

First of all, I have to say that I'm fortunate to have 3 other cooks in the household. But still, I didn't want the burden of meals to fall on the others when they also have lives and work. And, one daughter was sick for a week, so she couldn't help much. 

This is how my family managed:

As I mentioned before, I made my own foods in advance to eat for the first few days. I also did some baking last weekend to see my family through the week -- bread, bar cookies, and granola. This saved me from feeling like I needed to get back to work before I was ready.

For the family meals, one daughter had last Friday as her family cooking night. She made us pepperoni pizza, doubling the recipe so that there would be an additional large pizza for this week. On Sunday, she was making a lunch for her boyfriend and his grandparents. Again, she doubled the recipe to save extras for this week. So, Monday and Tuesday, my husband and two daughters had the leftovers from her cooking for the boyfriend and family, reheating the pasta dish and making a fresh salad both nights. Wednesday and Thursday the three of them had the leftover pepperoni pizza with some steamed broccoli one night and Cole slaw and tangerines the second night.

All four nights of this week were super simple for dinner prep, thanks to my daughter doubling 2 meals she was cooking. My other daughter has been able to rest this week and work at regaining her strength. And my husband didn't have to cook at the end of a work day.

My thoughts -- if we ever have a situation like this again, where we know in advance that I will be incapacitated for a couple or a few days, doubling recipes a couple of nights the week in advance would provide enough heat-and-eat meals for the rest of the family to simply serve themselves. This wasn't all planned out in advance. It just sort of came together with the help of the non-sick daughter. But now that I know how well a little extra cooking and baking in advance could make a hard week so much easier, we will work things out in this same way again.

Recovering on a Liquid and Soft Diet

Thank you to all who said prayers or well wishes on my behalf. I so appreciate it.

Monday was rough, Tuesday was rough, but today I'm doing better. I'm wiped out, but my pain is now under control. I hope to feel better and better with each passing day.

Liquid and soft diets are challenging enough. Liquid and soft diets when you're lactose intolerant and feeling poorly adds a new level to the challenge. Fortunately, this is not new to me. The last surgery and the extraction before that required a liquid/soft diet for several days post-procedure. I'm actually now really getting this down.

On Sunday afternoon, I made myself a quart of pureed broccoli-cheddar soup and a pint and a half of vanilla non-dairy pudding. Vanilla pudding can be combined with pureed pumpkin and spices for a pumpkin pudding (boosting the nutritional value of the pudding) or served with a teaspoon of cocoa powder for a small cup of chocolate pudding or eaten just as vanilla pudding.

I also took containers of applesauce, crabapple sauce, and pureed pumpkin from the freezer to thaw. In addition to stirring pumpkin into vanilla pudding, it can be mixed with applesauce with a pinch of cinnamon. 

When I wanted a bit of bread with my pureed soup, I diced a slice into small dices and stirred them into a watered down version of the soup to soften the bread. Bread this soft becomes a bread-y mush, maybe not appealing under normal circumstances, but very welcome when on a no-chew diet.

And of course I've been able to eat mashed potatoes, mashed ripe bananas, and mashed ripe avocado, plus various smoothies.

By thinking ahead about my meals, I was prepared and ready to feed myself in the early days after the surgery. I knew what I'd have for each meal and snack for a couple of days. For these first three days I'm sticking to liquids and other non-chew foods. Tomorrow I'll be able to introduce foods like scrambled eggs and soft bread. Meat is still something of a challenge.

This is pureed chicken and vegetable soup.

To address that challenge, this afternoon I made a pot of chicken and vegetable soup, using a diced half-breast of chicken, some onion, celery, garlic, carrots, and seasonings in water. When the vegetables were fully cooked, I added a small handful of broken whole wheat pasta to cook in the liquid. Once the noodles were soft, I pureed the entire batch in a pitcher blender. This tastes better than it looks like it would. I'll be having pureed chicken-vegetable soup for a few meals in the next two days.

Chicken purees more easily than beef. The fibers are less stringy and tough in chicken than in beef. So I find it to be a good first meat to use in my "liquid" meals. It still will leave a small amount of texture if simply using a regular pitcher blender, but those bits are easily swallowed as is, and will digest easily. After surgery or an injury, protein is essential for repair. I'm glad to be at a point now to be able to add some meat to my days' meals.

There are some difficult aspects to subsisting on a liquid or soft foods diet, like boredom, wanting to chew something, missing favorite foods. But I'm trying to look on the bright side, that this is just part of the process to getting a healthy mouth back. Soon enough I'll be eating pizza and burgers with the rest of the family once again.