Puree Day 1

I consulted my nutritionist instructions, and it turns out today is the day I can start puree. I had some baby cereal (it was Beech Nut whole wheat with raisin) and it was pretty good (I put some Splenda in it). That was fine.

A couple of hours later, I tried to eat some lunch meat--thin-sliced--and immediately got sick after about four bites. I think it was a mild dumping episode, and it was miserable! Nausea, sweat, dizzy, praying to the porcelain God (and I don't have the knees I used to when my lifestyle necessitated frequent prayers to the P.G.). That will teach me not to look at the label--I bet it had sugar in it. Bleargh.

Overall, I feel somewhat sore and still very tired. The worst of the bruising is beginning to heal and turn interesting colors in the interim, but I can't take any of the bandages off the incisions until I see the surgeons on the 13th. I'm just not up to doing ANYTHING, so most of the time I stay horizontal. Books, TV, and the laptop are keeping me from losing my mind. I feel like I should be doing more, but Mr. Salted says, "You just had major surgery. Just rest." It's hard, though. I hate for him to have to work all day and then come home and do all the chores too.

My ankle surgery has been tentatively scheduled for October 1.

First Forays into Puree

I bought some baby food last week to test my "why can't I just put protein powder in it after surgery?" query. I tried one kind--I think it was some chicken and sweet-potato combo It was, in a word, vile. I could hardly stand to finish the one bite I tried--no wonder babies make horrible faces when they get fed. (I felt a rush of guilt for playing that "here comes the airplane" game with every baby I ever fed when I was babysitting.) Fortunately, I only bought three or four jars because I feared this might be the case; life is one big experiment at the moment.

When I was buying all those yummy soups at Trader Joe's the other day--beef barley, stuff with lentils, etc.--I had a light bulb, ie, why can't I just heat them up and puree them in the blender? I did that for lunch today, and it wasn't bad at all. The consistency is strange after being used to traditional soup with "chunks", but it almost felt more filling and tasted the same. Of course, homemade soup or stew would be better, but my culinary ambitions are slim to none. We'll see how I do. It's hard to make myself eat soup in warm weather, but I can let it get lukewarm. The protein content is adequately high for things with meat and beans in them, and the sugar content didn't look bad, though I will have to keep reading labels as I've trained myself to do now.

I wonder about pureeing fruit. Is it better to steam it or warm it up and then puree it, even if you refrigerate afterward, or just do it at room temperature? (If these questions seem ridiculous to people who have never met me in real life, I am known as "the woman who thinks Hamburger Helper is too much work" and other similar variations on that theme.)

I can't remember if I mentioned this previously while rhapsodizing about the joys of Target the other day, but they have Muscle Milk Light in vanilla flavor, where Costco just has chocolate. Of course, the chocolate is better (IMO), but it's good to switch it up a little sometimes.