[Sca-cooks] FW: OOP - Culinary challenge for a feeding tube patient

Kimberly Vallance tibbles74 at gmail.com
Mon Jan 21 22:03:16 PST 2008


I am glad to hear that your friend is doing better. Now you said they 
have to be clear liquids? Well for flavor since you state that he can 
taste it.. why not Jello? It counts as a clear liquid and comes in many 
many many flavors. Nutrients if he can have more milky products look 
into the Ensures... but as for broths... make a fish soup send in 
through the food processor then you can strain through a cheese cloth... 
as to get the liquids and fish oils i have heard are good for you. If he 
can have the more milky or non clear you can always look at the ummm 
muscle man line like at gnc... for weight gain. if his doc clears him 
for non-clear liquids the sky is the limit... as most stuff may be 
broken down. you could make a stock.. with lots of flavor... lots of 
veggies... take out bones puree it and then strain it via cloth. so that 
it is straight liquid. Does that make sense?

Anne de la Mare
Web Minister for the Canton of Ealdnordwuda
Barony of Northwoods
Pentemere Region
Middle Kingdom

Christine Seelye-King wrote:
>  
>
> Follow up to my previous post, it's Nutren 1.5 - here's the website for it:
> http://www.nestle-nutrition.com/product.aspx?objectID=4187EEFA-A043-4575-945
> 4-9C57D7D69FB5
>
>  
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: King's Taste Productions [mailto:kingstaste at comcast.net] 
> Sent: Sunday, January 20, 2008 7:15 PM
> To: 'Cooks within the SCA'
> Subject: OOP - Culinary challenge for a feeding tube patient
>
>  
>
> Dear Cooks,
>
>             I have a friend that has been fighting throat cancer for the
> last several months.  He has been declared cancer free and is now on the
> long rebuilding process to heal and recover.  For the foreseeable future
> (and for some time now) he has a feeding tube in his stomach.  He subsists
> on Nutra ??? right now, which provides 375? calories per 8? ounces.  The
> label says the second ingredient is maltodextrin, so a lot of the calories
> are provided by easily-digestible corn syrup.  It is vanilla flavored and
> has a fiber supplement in it.  To my great astonishment, he can actually
> taste this stuff!  It is put into the tube in his stomach and it hits his
> salivary glands.  He says all he really gets out of this stuff is the
> vanilla and the fiber, making it taste like vanilla wood.  (This part of the
> process really fascinates me, and I think I'll be cruising some medical
> journals to see what they have to say about the sense of taste and bypassing
> the mouth with feeding.)  He can take other things through the tube (like
> all his meds) so he can take liquids blended up and put through, although it
> has to be put through a very fine sieve - it basically has to be clear or
> mostly clear to pass through.  I asked his wife if she can give him broth
> through it, and she said yes, but it only replaces his water, not the
> nutrient stuff, because of the caloric and fiber and nutrient content.    
>
>  
>
> I had made a chicken corn tortilla soup for us over the weekend, and we
> ended up taking some of the broth and straining it (the only thing I could
> find was a French Press, but hey, it worked like a charm!) and then thinning
> it down again.  It was a stock I'd made with smoked turkey carcasses, then
> the soup consisted of the stock, chicken thighs, corn, black beans, diced
> tomatoes, cilantro, garlic, a touch of tobasco, some lime juice, salt and
> pepper, then thickened with masa harina.  After straining it, she tried it
> through his tube, and he said "chicken stock?  And I taste a smoky flavor"
> !!! I was totally amazed!  He was thrilled to be able to taste anything else
> but the vanilla wood!  (Like I said, she can and does give him other clear
> liquids, but he has lost a lot of weight, so she has to keep his nutrients
> and energy up).  
>
>  
>
>             So now I am trying to figure out how to make basically clear
> liquids that can carry enough fiber and calories and nutrients to be able to
> replace a can of the Nutra every once in a while.  I guesstimated that the
> soup might have had half the caloric value of the Nutra, so she counted it
> as a half a can.  I'm guessing he would rather have savory than sweet, since
> he's got all the vanilla he can handle (wonder if he'll ever like the taste
> of vanilla things again after this is all over?).  A good rich stock is a
> great start, and I can certainly do that.  But it needs to be higher in
> calories than that.  Simply blending up a regular soup doesn't work, even
> strained it tends to clog the tube, so it can't have any 'bits' in it.
> Water is the universal solvent, so it has to dissolve whatever I'm using and
> carry it in that way.  I am compiling a list of things that can be dissolved
> or steeped in water that help increase the calories and nutrient content of
> the water.  Then I just have to make tasty recipes out of those things,
> which should be the easy part - I hope!
>
>  
>
> Anyone care to give this culinary challenge a try?  It's for a good cause!
>
> Chirstianna
>
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>   




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