Friday blends.

No-blend breakfast.
250mls milk
150mls fruit smoothie (innocent acai berry)
30g four grain baby porridge.

This is our lazy breakfast, our holiday breakfast, our "oops it's early let's not wake the neighbours" breakfast. Very easy and straightforwards. I was worried about low protein but after looking at the week's food, I think I can stop worrying. We may use this even more often than we already do, or pre-mill some of the readybrek and weetabix but stick to the silent mornings.

Tea (and lunch tomorrow).
1 tin sardines in oil, with the oil.
1 big tin sweet corn.
1 large slice Chinese cabbage.
1 large slice nice bread (sourdough?).
Extra water to blend.

Thick, tasty, full of goodness. No clementine because I forgot to add it.

Tia

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

Blended Diet Adventures. Fun with Real Food.

We're a sociable bunch here. We eat out a lot, especially on holiday.

For years, this has meant that we've booked tables with "there will be four (or eight or ten) of us, two in wheelchairs, and she doesn't eat." Miss Mog has very happily either dozed as the rest of us eat, or stuck her tongue out for tiny tastes of whatever smells best at the table.

Since moving away from formula onto blended table food, this has changed a little. Instead of "and she doesn't eat," we've bought her a meal and brought it home to blend for later, whilst bringing out her preblended meal and asking for some hot water to warm it through. Nice, inclusion at mealtimes, the chance to choose from the menu with the rest of us, and eating at the same time as the rest of us.

Today though, for the very first time, Mog got to do what her little sister has been doing for years now, and what most of us take for granted whenever we eat out. She chose a meal, and ate it there and then with the rest of us.

We brought the blender with us, but the restaurant chose to use their own. There was no hint of surprise on the waitress' face, and the only only questions were what did we want it blending with (answer: the cranberry juice she'd ordered), and did we want it served in a bowl (yes please).

And Mog loved it. Food at the same time as everyone else, from the same menu as everyone else, and served by the same waitress as everyone else. And instead of Mog having a taste from everyone else's plate, we all had a taste from hers as it looked so good.

And that's what a blended diet is all about really. Real Food at the right time, the same as everyone else.

And for those interested, Denny's Spinach with Pico de Gallo and Bacon, with Cheddar Mash, blends down beautifully and would make a soup fit for anyone.

A lovely new first for the end of the holiday - and Mog, I'm sorry it took until the last night for us to think of asking. Next time...
Tia

Yum

This week's fruit and veg box looks particularly appetising, perhaps because I now have the leisure to decide what to cook and when without a small voice informing me of what she does and doesn't want and like and need, and without the constant CBeebies chatter. It's almost enough to make me want a giant bowl of vegetable soup with a banana, mango, and pear smoothie to finish. Almost...

It is, however, really satisfying to be able to cook for all three of us these days. To take some fish from the freezer, add fresh potatoes and leafy greens, scoop some of that into Izzy the Whizzy, and know that all three of us are getting what we need from things I can see and touch and smell, not from a bland, artificially scented, powder.

Oily fish tonight with some nice dark leafy veg. Chicken yesterday, with roasted roots. Leek and potato frittata tomorrow perhaps. Antioxidants, omega oils, minerals, vitamins, natural fibre. Different colours, different smells, different feels in the stomach. One and a half of us will be getting food through a tube rather than chewing and swallowing, but why should that mean different food?

I must go; the veg box came with a recipe for Carrot Muffins and it is calling my name.
Tia

Would you rather

Have this for breakfast, lunch and tea, and everything inbetween?

Or this?
Live off this?
Or this?
Tia