Today's been a strange food day.
    I decided to mention it because I think it had something to do with finally prying the shit loose inside her and sending it on its way, although I have only a vague idea as to why she might have backed up.
    The Bowel Back-up, which lasted four days, may have had something to do with the fact that she ate 11 dried blueberry & mixed berry muffins, while they were from-the-oven warm, within a half hour period early Sunday afternoon, March 27th. I baked just under two dozen muffins for the company we'd just learned we'd be expecting on Monday. I'd taken the last tin of muffins from the oven, placed them evenly on the cooling rack with the contents of the first tin and had gone in to shower, thinking nothing of leaving the muffins out as Mom was in the living room in her rocking chair underneath the dryer. When I returned from showering about 20 minutes later, Mom was lounging over the kitchen counter next to a stack of empty muffin cups stuffing what looked like yet another muffin into her mouth. I counted her waste. 11 cups. Wow.
    "These are sure good muffins, you're a good cook, Gail," was all she had to say.
    To be fair, the muffins weren't those monstrosities popular at delis and coffee houses. They weren't even the jumbo-slightly-less-than-monstrous ones sold in the "gourmet" section of chain groceries, now. Just plain, old, elementary-school-birthday-cupcake-size muffins. And, they were awfully good.
    On the other side, though, she downed the eleven muffins about an hour and a half after breakfast.
    That's a lot of wheat and fiber for one system to efficiently process.
    And, then, lately, she's been noticing advertising on television and decidings she wants to try certain fast food meals. Last week, I think, or maybe a couple of weeks ago it was someone's Sicilian Meat pizza. Tonight it was Arby's Bacon Cheddar Melt and their Limited Promotion: A Peanut Butter Chocolate Shakes with bits of Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in them. A sort of a thin Blizzard. Anyway, lately her diet has been better than superb (expect for those muffins), so I thought, it couldn't hurt. Well, I continue to forget that chocolate in any quantity, now, will loosen her bowels even if there's nothing up there to loosen them. I think that's what caused the final shoot out this evening. Anyway, I think we're safe for a couple of days.
    Planning food, caring for people through the food one cooks, isn't as easy as it looks. There are times when I might, for instance, make sure she gets some chocolate because she's backed up. That's, however, if I know we have no outings planned. There are other times, like today, when I see, ahead, that vegetables are going to lag in meal planning so I get V-8 juice in early and even try to tempt her to drink two cans of it, which isn't too hard; she likes V-8 juice.
    Following are some of the other cooking concerns that flicker through my mind as I plan my mother's food intake (not just meals but snacks, what she might reach for in the refrigerator if she ends up in front of the refrigerator unmonitored):

• I always use a combination of whole wheat and white flour, now, regardless of what I'm baking. I often add wheat germ and other grains, like oats or a multi-grain concoction sold, as well, by Quaker.
• Because of my mother's anemia, I am careful to keep her meat/dairy/poultry consumption up. There are some green vegetables and dense fruits that deliver iron but, when push comes to shove, nothing delivers more iron of the easiest type to digest than red meat.
• On days when her thirst isn't operating up to par, I monitor the liquids she takes in her food as well as pushing drinks. For instance; cottage cheese, yoghurt, if we have lots of vegetables (which are primarily water), etc.
• When her sweet tooth is screaming I try to combine both lusciousness and judiciousness. For instance: I know better than to load her down with chocolate, anymore; sometimes she just needs the taste of sweet and a cup of artificially sweetened yoghurt or a couple pieces of sugar free candy will do the trick; sometimes, a can of mandarin orange slices in light syrup takes care of craving for cake or a pie; when all else fails and sugar just isn't a good idea, some sort of pickle will usually stop the craving...for awhile.
• I also keep in mind, throughout any one day, approximately how much dairy calcium she's getting versus how much sunshine. She can get plenty of sunshine in here, winter or summer, but I have to make sure she is in its way.
• I don't worry, with my mother, too much about cholesterol, how many eggs she's getting, what kinds of fats she's getting, etc. She fits the profile of someone who's always had fairly high cholesterol and no heart disease. I keep an eye one it, when it's taken, but she receives no medication or special dietary precautions for it, regardless of the reading.
• I am, as well, very well versed in her likes and dislikes, how her tastes change and why, what loss of appetite might mean and when it's a good idea to medicate for nausea, etc.

    I'm lucky, overall, from a dietary standpoint in my mother's life, that I love to cook, enjoy presenting interesting meals and my mother has an adventurous palate. I never would have thought that I'd ever seduce her to eat vegetables in the amounts she does, now, nor that she would look forward to and request our Cobb salad dinners. I never would have thought that she'd give up chocolate candy and other sweets on her own. But both of these things happened, with almost no pressure from anyone, me or the medical profession. Of course, I purposely set a tantalizing example: In our first years together I cooked separate meals, breakfasts, lunches and dinners, for her and me. Mine was always the one with the vegetables. I know how to use color to enhance flavor, I know how to season and steam, I know how to mix meat and vegetables and seasonings, and, little by little she began to opt for my dinners, telling me she was doing this only to "make it easier on" me. At that point, I began to work compromises into our meals: I'd, for instance, make macaroni and cheese but add meat, onion, celery and green pepper, plus extra cheese. At first she'd pick out the vegetables...then, I chopped them smaller and it was too much of a hassle. She used to eat cans of beans. Cold. I started saving bits of ham to spice up the beans, saute onions and celery and peppers, maybe add some tomatoes if I have some, etc. Heat it up an make it into a meal. She used to live on sandwiches, which, when she began to loose her interest in the kitchen, I continued to make for her at her request: Full of meat and Sandwich Spread (Kraft, usually) and/or Miracle Whip and/or butter and some kind of cheese and probably some pickles or pickle relish...whatever she wanted. Then, I'd eat my Italian Stir-fry with chicken and loads of vegetables while she ate her sandwich and she'd wonder out loud about what I was eating and it sure smelled good and could she try just a piece of the chicken or maybe a piece of onion...and now she and I eat almost exactly the same thing.
    So, anyway, I think I'm going to start writing about our meals here rather than at the Mom's Daily Tests & Meds site. That'll help distribute some of the space usage around and I will be inclined to write here more often and remain thoughtful about food and my Ancient One.
- posted by Gail Rae @ 00:47  1 comments   email...this post