Thursday's blends.

Breakfast

50g oats
6 Dried apricots
1 kiwi
250mls milk.


Tea
375g lamb mince, fried with
1 large white onion.
200g carrot, mashed with
200g swede.

Blended with
250mls apple juice,
150mls water from cooking the veg,
2 clementines.

This made three pots not two - one for tea, one for lunch and one for the freezer. All good.

Tia

Wednesday Blends

Apologies for muddled photographs. Blogging by phone and tired.

Breakfast today
40g oats
A banana
An apple
3 prunes
250mls milk.

Evening blend, chicken and ham sandwich.
330mls coconut water
50g chicken
50g ham
1 large raw carrot
1 clementine
2 fat slices of bread.

All good.
Tia

Tuesday Blends

A cold morning needed Readybrek to give us all that healthy nuclear glow. 30g, with 10g cashew nuts, a small kiwi, an apple, and 250mls milk. Tasty.

Supper tonight is lazy, care of Waitrose. Poached salmon fillets (150g), 140g bag of watercress, spinach and rocket salad, 200mls apple juice, 2 cloves of garlic, a clementine and a drizzle of toasted sesame oil, blended with some pre-cooked jasmine rice.

This produced not quite enough volume, so when she's finished her tea I will offer her a yoghurt or fruit squidge (pouch of fruit purée baby food) for pudding or supper.

Tia

Monday blends

Two blends today. First breakfast - 200mls milk blended up with a small apple, a small banana, six almonds and 25g porridge oats. Add a spoonful of black treacle (molasses) and enjoy. Actually, in the interests of honesty, make that slightly more milk, a large banana and an average sized apple, then divide the spoils so Mog has 450mls and the Little Princess 150mls. But the values here should be roughly Mog's.

 

Mog took the second serving of yesterday's egg mix into school for lunch, as usual.

 Tonight's blend, chilli chicken. 150g skinless chicken breast fillets, roasted in a tablespoon of rapeseed oil. One raw banana pepper, one raw courgette, two small clementines, and a large cup of quinoa with bulgar wheat. I blended it up with 300mls green tea, partly for the antioxidants, and partly because I thought it was her usual fennel and dandelion one.

Again, two servings; one for tea tonight and one in the 'fridge ready to take to school tomorrow.

 

These pots hold 430mls each; I usually have an extra 60mls so she has 430 for lunch and 490 for tea. Mog's lunch is generally warmed and thinned by adding up to 100mls of hot water; not necessary with tea when the blend is fresh. We then flush through with another 60mls water. When we started bolus blends rather than pumped formula, Mog would tolerate 200mls over 20 minutes, with a break in the middle. Now she will take 500-600mls in around 5-10 minutes and is very happy to do so.

In addition to this, Mog has 150-200mls water with her morning and evening meds, and at 11 and 2 at school. If she's been swimming, or has had a lot of seizures, she may have a yoghurt or bowl of fruit puree to give her a bit more energy. 

Please note the values in the nutritional breakdown aren't exact; I can't always find the identical ingredients. So the values for tonight's supper are based on straight quinoa, rather than the rather delicious mix of red and white quinoa with bulgar wheat. They won't be that different, but quinoa is slightly higher in protein than wheat. And for some reason nutrition data is acknowledging the presence of vitamin D in her blends but not estimating quantities. Oh, and it's only letting me use skim milk, whereas we use semi-skimmed (2%); the only 2% option on the site insists on having added Vitamin A and "non-milk solids". I don't want to think about what non-milk solids might be being added to milk, so I'm hoping that's a US thing! 

Tia

A week of blends

Some people on our Blended Diet group have asked for some recipes, and I said I would post a week of blends. I don't usually follow recipes, just throw everything into the blender. So, for this week only, I'm entering everything I can into nutritiondata.com and recording the results. 

Tonight's blend - Eggs Florentine.

  

Three eggs, scrambled in 50mls milk. 

200g frozen spinach, blanched

1 small courgette (100g)

1 clove garlic, raw

150mls apple juice

1 potato (170g), microwaved in its skin

additional water from cooking the spinach to thin. 

  

Throw everything into the blender on low, turn up to high then notice centre of lid not on. Locate lid, press in firmly, wipe down walls and boiler, blend on max until a deep and frothy green. Pour into two 430ml containers, slurp an extra 60mls into a syringe and let cool. 

One pot for tea, one pot for lunch tomorrow, nutritional breakdown is for one serving not both. 

Tia

Edit - screenshot from nutrition data doesn't appear to be in focus. Link here http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/recipe/2794100/2
Tia

Random bits.

Miss Mog is asleep. Without Chloral Hydrate, for the first time in a while. However, as she has had Buscopan, Diazepam, paracetamol and ibuprofen, in addition to her eight regular evening meds, I'm not sure this counts as entirely natural sleep. It is peaceful though.

Very excited to go to Guides, but very very distressed before we got there and for the hour we stayed there. Home, and a sweet smile to show off her rather stunning Chinese pyjamas before bed, more distress and then, suddenly, the magic correct position was found and she was asleep. I'm hoping it's a more successful and lasting magic positioning point than the last few nights; three hourly turns get old fast.

TLP needed a haircut. The before picture is below, together with her revenge for it. We were all set to find a hairdresser, but she decided she didn't want to leave the house. Except to get fish and chips. Amazingly, she doesn't seem too upset with the result.

We've had half term, and all survived. If you can ignore the screaming, and I think I might be getting worryingly good at that. The ignoring, not the screaming. Perhaps I should try the screaming.

I'm tired.
Tia

My girl

Can
Bake a cake.
Ice a cake.
Giggle wildly at her uncle in a hat.
Feed her tube fed sister.
Brush her sister's hair.
Sort out her own Nippy (ventilator) mask.

But my girl cannot
Put things in a bin.
Get through a day without a meltdown somewhere in it.
Accept that "Stupid fat smelly Mummy" isn't likely to result in extra cakes and tv privileges.
Notice when she is forcing her chair through walls and doors.

Jolly fine cake though.

Running away.

Half term took us by surprise. Too short a term, and too much tragedy in it. A week coming up with no plans other than hospital appointments; too much thinking time and not enough entertainment.

So, we skipped out of town. Fled the sleet and snow for the surprisingly sunny and not at all frozen Arctic wastelands of the North. And came to visit Miss Mog's very best friend.

A day to get here (ish). A day to get to church and then pootle, and today a day for Big Expeditions. Alnwick Gardens may never recover.

Fountains, cherry orchards not in blossom but with the hint of good things to come. Aconites and snowdrops breaking into flower, signs all over that Winter is over and the Spring is here. Beautiful green willow forming a roof over an accessible maze, zig zag pathways to zoom down, and an accessible tree house with rope bridges. And cake.

And friends, good friends. It's good for the soul.

Tia

Cupcake cheesecakes with sour cream topping.

For Sue.

This is an amalgam of several recipes, so please excuse the variety of different weights and measures.

Crush half a packet digestive biscuits, mix with melted butter and press into bottoms of 25-30 foil cake cases (paper ones go soggy). Bake 10 mins at 180c.

Meanwhile, mix 700g cream cheese with 1 cup caster sugar, 4 tbs plain flour, 1/2 cup sour cream, 1tsp vanilla and 3 medium eggs. Start with ingredients at room temp and beat well.

Spoon into cake cases and bake for 25 minutes at 180c. Leave in oven 30 minutes after cooking. Cool.

Sour cream topping - 1.5 cups icing sugar and 1/2 cup butter. Ish. Buttercream anyway, beat until fluffy with 2 tsp vanilla. Add 2 tbs sour cream, beat well - more icing sugar if you want it thicker, more vanilla or sour cream for more flavour.

Dollop onto the cheesecakes and spread out.

I had 5 cheesecakes left without topping; I plan to cover them in nutella at some point.

Salted fudge brownies are from the tastykitchen blog and very delicious.

Just one thing.

Disability awareness at Guides tonight. Miss Mog missed it, but her two schoolmates turned up with wheelchairs to assess accessibility. Various girls turned up with info gleaned from variously disabled siblings, we turned egg cartons into beginner brailers, had feely things and see-y things and chocolatey things (because everything can fit chocolate). We had miming, and signing, and exercises in tearing paper to show how different we are and yet how alike. And we borrowed Mog's communication switches.

And then we challenged the girls to think about what they'd choose to say, if they had to be limited to just one message on a switch as their only voice.

Some of them had instant answers. "Help me I can't talk" seemed to be a fairly common instant response - until I asked them what they needed help with, and they realised they couldn't say. Several girls went for something along the lines of "Hello", and one of the leaders decided on "Thank you."

A few chose specific messages, ones which they realised wouldn't be needed all the time, but which they thought would be the most important thing they'd need to communicate. "I'm hungry" and "I need the toilet" seemed to have equal place there.

A couple of the girls who are used to switches decided recording music or family activities would be the most important thing; linking home to wherever else you might be going, and using the switch to share news without words; a conversation starter rather than a set phrase.

And one Guide who has difficulty with words at times decided she needed a switch with "Mummy!" recorded on it. Which made me think, because I'm not sure that's an option we've ever offered Imi, and yet how many children do end up stuck on a "Mummy mummy mummy" loop for a while?

Mog's switch says "I've got something to say" - although none of the girls could hear that message. She has a new switch coming very soon. We use her switch as a springboard; she gets our attention and then her talking book has far more possibilities for her than anything accessible via single switch would give. And we've stayed with that message, knowing it works, but perhaps not really thinking about the alternatives.

The Guides have made me think. So I'm passing the challenge over to you. If you could only say one thing, what would you choose to say?
Tia

Even If