Garlic Butter Bean Mash...

Chelle,
I'm addicted, I've nearly cleaned out the local Tesco of butter beans.
I'm also eating alot of baked beans with blue cheese and a knob of butter.
I've also nearly cleared out the local Tesco of luxury toilet roll too!!!!!

*lmao*
Suzie you're wicked!!
Definately will try those baked beans.
Amirs getting me the Nigella Express cook book this weekend as i'm loving the new series.
I'm always having people round in the evening and i'm always feeling too lazy to cook & her choccy mouse with melted marshmallows is the first thing on the list to try!
MmMmMmmmm!
Good luch with the toilet roll situation

Hi Chelle,

Keep them coming Pleeeaase. I'm down to size 0 and like you said in one of your previous post's it's not a good place to be. I look like I'm anorexic. My dietician is almost pulling her hair out. I'm still on the peg and managing to eat more too, I'm consuming around 2 1/2 thousand calories a day and at 5' 10" and under 8 stone am not a pretty picture naked

Any recipies that will help me put on a pound or 14 would be gratefully received.

Susie. x

Hi Susie ,
Have you tried butternut squash and sweet potato ,mashed with milk and garlic butter?
they are very tasty.

Spinach sweated in soy sauce aknob of butter,until soft and served with a poached egg slides down nicely,too.

For a really disgusting anytime snack,(best eaten when you are alone,because you get
raaather messy)is wait for it....
Banana on toast!
It can be done ,(it sounds awful Iknow ),and when it was suggested to me I squawked, I havent any teeth!!

But the trick is cut off the crusts,butter whilst still hot,spread with mashed banana,sprinkle with a,little sugar.Cut into small pieces ,retire to a quiet corner and enjoy!

Toni.x

Hi Toni,

I tried the butternut squash and sweet potato at the weekend. I will not disgust you by telling how much there was NOT left over, ha ha.
It was truly scrummy.
I have already tried the poached egg and spinach, have always liked that. The banana with toast doesn't work for me. I can't chew the toast enough to get it down, it just sticks in my throat and I choke. Maybe in time.

SusieR x

Hi! SusieR,
The things you take for granted (ie. Eating, Tasting,Salivating) are so hard to accept when you lose them, My meals are all to be consummed with a sauce or Liquid of some sort so that they go down. I purchase lots of different types of meals just to try and find some thing different to eat, these are not neccesarily what Deb likes but I need to add weight as I am still losing and am down to 92kgs after being an overweight 137kgs.
Some things like dry food I can't consume as they rquire to much Soda Water to get past my Throat, however I bought a heap of Prawns and with them being cooked under the Dbl Griller they went down quite well (with a nice seafood sauce) but I tried some Fillet Steaks and they just wouldn't pass the throat so had to feed them to our dogs(lucky buggers are better fed than me). I also purchased a Seafood Mix and that comes with small prawns, mussels,Scollops, ETC, and is resting in a seafood sauce, this went down like a treat however the sauce was a little bit tarty and that causes a conflict with my throat.
Anyway These meals did pass the throat test quite well, hope this gives you something else to try.
Love Trev

Trev,
I struggled with steak and beef at first. But with a mild pepper sauce or diane sauce and water to sip on its managable now.
Its amazing the difference a few more months will make!
Keep trying new things and keep goin back and trying again.
I think my body has resigned to this as the new norm now. Cant even remember what it was like to have all that saliva before?!

Hi! Chelle,
I can manage some meats but it has to be very tender and that is not easy to check on at times, suaces are great but I am having problems with over spiced (not to far over) sauces and drinks, as they make my mouth scream for mercy (once I could take the hottest spices available) and even a smooth type of Listerene sends my mouth into fits and burning.
Curried Eggs were a treat as obviously curry is not going to be a problem (Yahoo) . Tonight I cooked up a Mexicanna meal and kept the spices down low, it cosisted of chicken(that I cooked first then some rineless bacon also pre-cooked, then I boiled some milk and added some small pasta and the spices brought that to the boil and stired the mix and when it was getting near the time 5mins I added the chicken and the bacon and stired that for 2 mins and then added chopped capsicum,mushrooms,tomatoes(FRESH),olives, garlic and peas. Stired the mixture for another 2 mins and served it up with a dollop of sour cream and sundried tomatoes.
It went down like a treat and only had to drink one glass of iced coffee.
LOve TREV

Trev,

You little piggy! ha ha.

Seriously though, It's great to hear about everything you are trying. Obviously I'm going to nick some of your idea's.
I'm still having good days/bad days where eating is concerned, texture and appitite dictating. I could be really hungry and scoff the lot and other times be really hungry but my stomach will not play after a couple of fork fulls, if I try to force it down I just want to throw up!
Liquid intake is playing a big part too. I get really de hydrated if I'm not careful. Papaya juice and seven up is the favourite tipple of the moment. (Plus a shot of vodka if I have a naughty fit or am socialising!) The enzyme in the papaya juice is really good at getting rid of the mucus throat too.
As you know, I did not complete RT because of the problem of tissue break down so I do not suffer the same as most with salivia under production. Mine is the opposite where the damaged glands make me drool (or is it because I have a habit of buying naughty mags of naked men? - ha ha, just kidding) To try to counteract the drooling I have a hyacine patch behind my ear, it is supposed to dry up saliva production. It helps a little but the down side is loads of thick mucas in the back of my throat, which I can't get rid off by just swallowing and I can't cough it up as my throat muscles don't work that great any more after the disection.
Whinge, whinge, moan, moan, enough of that! All in all I am making some progress but the peg will still be in situ for a while yet as a back up, until I can get to the stage where I can eat enough normally.

If you come up with any more good ideas/tips, let us know, I know the peg is a life saver but I can't wait to get rid of it all the same.

Take Care
Love Susie. x x

A Happy and Healthy New Year to you all! I haven't posted for a very long time and the reason I am posting now is to ask you all if you have any objections to my using some of your recipes and suggestions as I am trying to put together a cook book for people like us, with eating difficulties. I have been intending to do this for quite some time but ill health has kept me from actually getting it off the ground.

As well as recipes I would like to include hints and tips that would be helpful to people who are newly diagnosed or just out of sugery/radiotherapy etc. So, any of your contributions would be very welcome.

I live on a totally pureed diet therefore my recipes are aimed at a limited number of people, whereas some of you are able to chew and manage a soft diet and others can eat most things yet have problems swallowing or unable to open the mouth very far etc so a whole range of ideas would be very helpful.

I have received a number of recipes from celebrity chefs (although they tend to send me soup recipes!)

The proceeds of the book will, of course, go to the Mouth Cancer Foundation.

I look forward to your comments - many thanks in advance! Brenda
email: brenda.brady@consil.co.uk

Hi Brenda,

How very nice to meet you. I have read some of your old posts on the message board and your blog but I think I joined here just as you were reducing your input on the message board.

Your idea of a cook book is brilliant and I will gladly send you anything I can to help as I am sure everyone else here will do.
Just don't freak at the number of e-mails I am sure you are going to receive!!!

Last September I started a Complimentary Health course at college. A large part of the course for this year deals with diet and nutrition. As part of the sylabus and for my exams, I have had to complete five case studies, where I have advised and provided a four week diet programe for clients.
Just to be different and to make others realise that there are other dietry problems from the ones most people are aware of, I did a case study on myself. I can honestly say that it is the hardest one I had to complete. To attempt to confirm to European guidlines, to make sure I was getting all the suggested foods in the food pyramid, when texture and form of the food we are expected to eat had to be taken into consideration, well it was bloody hard going! and that does not even explain the experiments I tried on myself!.
I have submitted my study for marking by ITEC, and I truly hope that it will make the powers that be become more aware that there are people like us in the world. Overweight, underweight, anorexia, bulmenia are all eating conditions that the general public are aware of. Is it too much to expect, that others apart from us, should be made aware of the constant battle we experience in trying to provide ourselves with the required nutrition just to stay alive.
Brenda, In future I'll contact you on your private e-mail. To all others here, I am not excluding you from this but feel Brenda's idea and request for input will take up far more space than is availble here.
Lets all of us who can give an input here. How great would it have been for us, if, when first starting to eat again, we had a book that would have given us guidlines and information to work from. All provided from people who have had the experience.
Brenda you are a star for taking the responsibility to provide the infomation for others.
All the very best for the project you have undertaken.
In admiration,
SusieR x

PS. For all that have read my post on eyesight, I've just done this with no specs, I've put them down somewhere and can't find them without wearing them. If there are any spelling or grammer mistakes, well sorry but I really can't see what I'm doing!!!!!!! xxxxx

Hello Susie and thank you so much for your quick and positive response (no errors and whattheheck if there were!!)

I really appreciate your enthusiasm and look forward to receiving your recipes and ideas. It will be friends such as yourself who will keep me going and give me the jolt I need to get on with this project.

Your Complimentary Health Course sounds really taxing so well done to you for doing all that and, as you say, it will surely help to bring our situation to the wider public. Good on you Susie and thanks again.

Hi Brenda,

Nice to meet you - I think your idea of putting together a cook book is an excellant one! I absolutely rack my brains in trying to find things for my husband Neil to eat. He has the lack of saliva problem and struggles with most textured food and like many of you gets really bored with soups and slops.
On Shrove Tuesday I decided to give pancakes a try - and guess what - he is now hooked! I do traditional ones with lemon and caster sugar plus a generous dollop of double cream and a scoop of ice cream. You can also serve them with Golden Syrup if citrus fruit is too tart. My next experiment will be with savoury ones - smoked haddock and cheese sauce, mushroom sauce and you can always use them like canneloni and if meat filling is difficult try spinacha and ricotta.
A question now for carers like me - do you struggle with eating in front of your partner - I hate it. Although Neil keeps telling me he doesn't have a problem watching me eat I still feel guilty tucking into a meal - to the extent I really don't really enjoy my food anymore.
I think it's all really about getting into a new way of living - last night Neil said he thought he would never be 'normal' again but I am trying to persuade him that where he is now is the 'new' normal.
Anyway - love to all - I'll try a keep you posted on how Neil's homeopathy is going and if come up with any other food ideas I'll let you know Brenda.
Love
Margaret

I found mince difficult to eat after the radiotherapy and have got round it by using Quorn instead. If you try a Quorn cottage pie, it tastes the same as a Shepherd's Pie. I also can't eat sausages any more in pubs because they're too spicy, but I can eat Quorn sausages. They're a bit of an acquired taste, but you do feel like you're eating real food.

Trev's idea of drinking soda water works very well when you get mashed potato stuck to the roof of your mouth!!

Th other day we had a stirfry of tofu and I found that very easy to eat, but again it's a bit of an acquired taste.

The idea of a cookbook is a great one. At the Marsden they sell a cookbook, but it's not suitable for people with mouth cancer.

Good luck with the idea.


Chris

I thought it was amusing that the snack bar at the marsden has NOTHING for people with our difficulties!
I think was you get to grips with fact you have no saliva you can pretty much move on to everything else. With the bite of food in your mouth, take a tiny sip of water and continue to chew. The drop of water is enough to get pretty much anything down. I'm even able to have sandwiches now (providing they aren't too packed full cuz they wont fit in the mouth). I don't eat the crusts or crusty bread though. But enjoy the soft tear and share garlic bread. Again its taking the sip for every bite. The down side to that is you end up with a glass full of gross floaty bits in the end. & when i'm at work i've had one or two comments about the bottle of water in one hand and the sarnie in the other. But i make sure people know the story. It's amazing i can still get floaty bits of food inside those bottles with a cap on!!

Too true, Chelle about the floaties.
After Trevor's op on Friday it was obvious there was still a backwash problem when he had a pea swirling around his glass of water!!!
D

*lmao*
A whole pea??!! Impressive!
One girl i work with gts me a fresh bottle after my lunch everyday so i don't have to continue to drink contaminated water!
I take great pleasure in showing every one the contents of my bottle though!

It's like gazing into a rockpool, isn't it? All sorts of interesting life forms in there!
D

I'm sure i've created a few new ones too!