foods that are easy for cbgdd patients to eat

[sondi]

my husband has cbgdd and is  unable to eat most foods any suggestions on foods other than baby foods?

[FurballsMom]

I one time bought a stick blender at a thrift store.  You can also find them online, which I'm sure would be easier to do than going shopping locally, since you wouldn't have to leave the house.

What the stick blender allows you to do is to leave your soup or other food in the pan you've been cooking in, and you just immerse it into the food your cooking.  They are also called immersion blenders.  These work great for things like mashed potatoes, too.

I love it, because there are fewer steps and less clean up to do.  Such a device will make cooking the congee easier, too.

Anyway, looking for ways to make the food yourself, instead of resorting to baby food in jars will prove helpful.  One way is that you would end up making food with adult taste and nutrition.

A great food you can try is split pea soup.  It won't require a blender, unless you have chunks of potato or carrot that are just too big for your husband.  You can make the traditional one with smoked ham bone for flavor, or you can get a smoked turkey neck for flavor without pork.  Or, you can make a completely vegetarian one, or one that is almost vegetarian that uses chicken broth for the added nutrition.  The traditional recipes that originated in Germany had the smoked ham bone and chunks of carrot or diced carrot in them.  You can be creative and add celery to split pea soup, too.

By the way, there are green split peas and there are yellow split peas.  If you have a store with a good bulk foods section you should be able to at least find the green split peas.  But, you can also find them in the aisles already bagged right by the other dried beans and rice.

There are some good black bean soup recipes, too.  Some actually require that the beans are mashed or blended, so that they actually become part of the stock.  I have a book that has a recipe that didn't seem too spicy to me that you can try:

Black Bean Soup

1 pound dry black beans (2 cups)
8 cups water
1 bay leaf
1 large onion, finely chopped
1 green pepper, chopped

Soak the beans overnight; drain and rinse.  (This is additional water for soaking.)  In a soup pot, combine all the above ingredients and simmer for 1 1/2 hours to 2 hours until the beans are very soft.  

My additional instruction that wasn't included would be to remind you to remove the bay leaf as they can't be eaten and can only be used to flavor the soup.  The soup will be fine if you don't wish to use the bay leaf.

Now add
1 tsp oregano
2 tsp cumin (ground)
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp lemon juice

Cook for about five more minutes.

Now, for my added instructions.

At this point the beans will be very soft.  You can go ahead and use the food processor or blender at this point to ensure that the beans are fully broken apart if it is necessary.  Some black bean soup that is sold ready made has the beans completely broken up in this manner, so you will enjoy eating something like this yourself.

Now, the final instructions just for you:

Serve with a scoop of cooked rice in the middle of each bowl if you wish, and garnish with chopped scallions.  (Cilantro leaves will work nicely, too.)

Adjust the herbs and spices as needed, so that nothing is too spicy for your husband.  Although, this recipe has no hot spices, so it should be fine.

Oh, and by the way, you can cook it with chicken broth if you wish.  This book I got it from is meant to be a vegetarian recipe book.  Anyway, the bean soup is nutritious and it does provide protein.  You can also try red bell pepper instead of green bell pepper to try a new flavor.  You will enjoy a recipe such as this yourself, so it's something you will feel more confident about giving to your husband as it has adult taste and nutritional needs met with something like this.

[FurballsMom]

You may get a better response if people knew what the abbreviation cbgdd means.  Does he have trouble swallowing?

Without more information, the only thing I can think of is to resort to the food processor for the foods, so he still gets better nutrition and you don't have to keep buying expensive jars of baby foods.  Certain types of soups, like ones with a winter squash base can be made more interesting and less boring by adding other vegetables and chicken broth and pureéing his portions in the food processor or blender.  If you can get the pieces of chicken small enough in a food processor, that might help, too.  If not, the added chicken broth would still be helpful.

You can look for simple congee (also known as rice porridge) recipes.  In this case, simpler is better.  The more complex ones would be too hard for your husband to eat.  But, any recipe that the rice can be made softer without diluting the recipe too much will help.  The "rice congee" used in hospitals is not true congee and leaves the rice in whole pieces, which would not work for your husband.  What would work better is any recipe that you can easily add more chicken broth to that not only makes the rice softer and come together more, but is more liquid.  This sort of recipe is used in many Asian cultures to help treat their invalids and has been used for centuries before there was any modern day medicine.  I even use it for myself when I'm not feeling good.

Start by cooking your rice the way you normally would.  Take the portion out you need for your husband and place in another pan.  Add enough chicken broth to cover the cooked rice well, but not enough to make it into a soup, yet.  The idea here is to cook it at a medium heat until the rice grains break apart and look more like over cooked starchy mess.  In the case of rice congee, that is exactly what you want.  As the starchy mess is forming, add more chicken broth as needed.  This is very necessary because in this case you want to keep it more liquid.  The more liquid, the better.  The chicken broth will definitely taste better, too, than just plain water.  What is done in the case of invalids or even when I'm not feeling good myself is to continue adding broth, according to how much solid food the person you are making this for can handle on his stomach.  If he can actually handle more solid food and is more or less having difficulty swallowing, you would simply continue cooking until the rice is about the same consistency as a soft pudding--or about the texture you know your husband can swallow.  Someone less well or dealing with stomach issues, and you would make it more liquid than solid.

You can use a food processor or blender at any point to make the mass into a smoother consistency as you feel necessary, too.

That would be the basic idea of congee for someone who is unwell.  Anything you can do to add various vegetables or the chicken itself that can be pureéd into this rice porridge mixture would be beneficial.  You would start with the things you know your husband can handle eating that can be cooked soft enough to place in the food processor or blender.  This would help add flavor and nutrition.