Hello everyone! I was born with fairly severe Cerebral Palsy and I have had swallowing issues my entire life. However, the last few years has seen my food swallowing ability decreasing. My doctor now has my wife and I putting my meals in a food processor before consumption. Although it looks like baby food, it has been surprisingly eatable. We just mix in some gravy and there you have it! However, we are running out of new ideas to try. So I am turning to some of you for some tasty ideas! Thank you in advance and have a wonderful day!
Hi, So sorry to hear of your trouble. I think putting the food in a food processor with gravy is a great idea. Basically you can eat anything that way and get the great taste. Other than pureed soups , milkshakes, soft ice cream, very loose oatmeal and pasta with red sauce, alfredo sauce(or other sauces) pureed, I can't think of anything else. If I do, I will let you know. I quickly googled pureed recipes and a bunch of sites came up. You might want to try that and see if there is any help there. Best of luck to you.
Thank you, BethD. I greatly appreciate your advice. I will be visiting those types of websites to see what suits my situation and taste. Luckily, I really love ice cream! Like a kid, I could eat ice cream, morning noon and night! Another idea that we tried and tasted great was pureed cornbread and mixed vegetables. I seemed to be able to swallow that fairly easily.
Your welcome. I hope you find something useful. I love ice cream as well but have to settle for the sorbets because I am allergic to dairy. I also eat the Rice Dream brand which is dairy free but nothing tastes like real ice cream. Enjoy your ice cream! That cornbread and mixed vegetables puree sounds really good. I know some cornbread recipes put in corn. Maybe you could pureed blueberry muffins as well? That would probably taste great and be nice for breakfast. Yogurt is probably easy for you to swallow as well.
My with also has an allergy to dairy. She loves to eat cereal, so she has turned to soy milk. It does not taste the same, but at least she can enjoy cereal. Having an allergy to diary has to be one of the worst allergies. So many of the good foods are made with dairy. So I think taking vitamins becomes even more vital in these cases. This rings true especially as we age.
Dairy isn't as healthy as everyone thinks anyway. There is no need to supplement.. calcium comes from the greens etc, not the cow itself, it's just how people think they need to get it, by allowing the cow to digest it first. Not necessary and pretty gross when you think about it. Studies also show, it's not protecting us from the very things people are drinking it for , so if you can find another milk, you'd be better off for it anyway. Soy isn't the only option, there are many and no two taste the same. I would suggest experimenting for sure. And to get the calcium, smoothies are great for this. Throw your greens into a blender and if you don't like the taste, smother it with fruits to hide the flavour. Pineapple is great at masking greens. Also, any soup you can think of is awesome blended. We sometimes do that just for the heck of it, it really changes it for the better sometimes. We just use veggies and water, but I know a lot of people need to add broths/stocks and other salty additions.. whatever makes you happy. Pretty much anything made with real, whole foods can be blended and enjoyed
Thanks for the tip, JosieP! I really had no idea that dairy is not as good for you as I thought. Perhaps it has just been drilled into our minds starting at a very young age. I am definitely going to relay your calcium tip to my wife and hopefully we can both eat better. To be honest, we still eat like we are teenagers without a care in the world. Starting to eat right is a choice that my family needs to quickly take seriously. She is now a one year survivor of stage three breast cancer. I am so proud of her for what she has accomplished. But we just need to continue to journey of properly caring for our nutritional needs.
Beating breast cancer; how amazing, I'm very happy for her Yes, now is always the time. Usually we wait until we're sick and even then, sometimes people feel they're already sick, so what is the point? Eating as healthy as possible changes everything. It will make the rest of your days the healthiest, most comfortable they can be and prevent and even reverse so many other illnesses. It can be difficult, but even a slow transition is better than none. Lots of luck to you both
You could try looking up some porridge recipes. I think this is one of the better ones to learn to cook if you are running out of ideas because it is a dish that is very versatile and also affordable since the ingredients few, simple, and cheap. All you'd need is some rice, broth, a few pieces of meat, and some extra spices and herbs like ginger and green onion. A good place to start would be the Chinese version called congee which in itself already has tons of variations, or you could also look for some other countries' variety of it such as the Filipino / Spanish one called arroz caldo. There is also a sweet version of this that used chocolate flavor and sweet milk called champorado, and any of these dishes can be adjusted to your liking and they will most likely still taste good.
That must be very frustrating for you! Have you tried making your own soups? My other half's grandmother has a fear of choking so her son makes her loads of really tasty and filling soups. He also gives her tortillas to dip in rather than bread. Good luck and I hope that you find something!
I relate to your need to keep eating fun and exciting. Some soft and delicious foods I have in my diet are: avocadoes, you can season them with salt, lemon juice, garlic powder, zartar, olive oil and brewers yeast; Jerusalem artichokes have a nice soft texture and bring you to the mind of potatoes with their texture; carrot ginger soup is delicious and fruit is delicious pureed with cinnamon, vanilla and honey.
I would probably try eating foods like pasta and soft vegetables. There are quite a lot of dishes that are delicious which include veg which is good for you, just over boil them to make sure they are really soft! Or my favorite, cous cous. It goes with most things and you can add whatever you like to it too!
Have you checked out Roger Ebert's cook book he wrote several years ago? He had to adapt his eating as well due to losing his jaw from surgery for his cancer, and he came up with a lot of crock pot recipes in the process. I'm assuming he meant for them to be soft food as well. A good pressure cooker can work wonders for making food incredibly soft and tender, especially stuff like chicken or pork in gravy. Plus it's much faster than slow roasting it for hours to get the same results. Or perhaps get a Vitamix blender - I've seen them make hot soup right in the blender - that's how fast the blades and motor are, they literally start to form heat from the friction they give off.
