Food!

With my weak jaws, degrading teeth due to constant clenching and grinding, and impaired swallowing capabilities, I am on a fairly limited diet and have been for months.

I have a lot of cravings that I can't indulge in.  Pizza, cheese and crackers, potato chips, a chocolate bar, a sizzling steak, toast with butter and jelly, a stuffed omelet, a Philly cheesesteak, the list goes on and on.

Kim comes home for lunch every day to check in on us and to have a quick bite and to give me a Nutren 2.0 supplement.  Most days she has a hot ham and cheese sandwich and some chips.  I often sit there looking at what she is eating and wish I could take a big bite!  The smell of the open bag of chips makes my mouth water.

For many months I made two eggs over easy before I went to work.  They were easier to eat than the cereal, oatmeal or breakfast bars I ate every morning at work for many years.  I ate a lot of soup or subway sandwiches for lunch.  I ate sushi as often as I had a chance. I loved spicy food - Mexican, Chinese, Thai, the hotter the better.  These days the only seasonings I use are butter, salt, sour cream, and every once in a while a little ketchup.

I was a pretty good cook.  Mom taught all of  us to bake and cook before we left home.  I fixed food in a Mexican restaurant in Sunnyside called the Foxfire for over a year with my friend Tom Leachman and many talented cooks while I was in college.  Sunday mornings at the Foxfire I was the sous chef for John Kiska for brunch.  I learned how to cook and season food without making it too spicy hot so that Kim and my in laws would eat it.  I must have made fresh salsa ala Foxfire more than 200 times over the last 28 years that Kim and I have been together, along with hundreds of pounds of  chicken and beef burritos/tacos, refried beans (special ingredient cinnamon), hundreds of chicken parmigiana, and countless other favorites.  Today I can't even hold a knife!

These days, everything I eat is either soft to begin with, mashed, or pureed in a food processor.  I can't tolerate spicy food, don't use pepper (my favorite seasoning), can't drink coffee or hot tea, and don't drink tap water.  I drink mostly Perrier or Other fizzy water (swallow easier for some reason).

For breakfast, I typically eat two eggs over easy, yogurt with pureed fruit, cream of wheats, or a smoothie.  For lunch, tuna fish salad, chicken salad, soup, or cottage cheese with some fruit and flax oil. For dinner, I usually have some combination of pureed meat in gravy, steamed spinach, mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, spaghetti squash and pasta sauce, apple sauce,  etc.  Every so often I treat myself to some Wegmans sushi, which isn't too bad pureed.  I was doing almost weekly when they had their wild salmon sushi, now not as often.  I don't eat a large volume since my jaws, arms, and hands are weak and the muscles get tired quickly.  I would like to get more  veggies into my diet but it is difficult to do.

Jean makes me a milkshake everyday to add calories.  Thank you!  Kim  and Jean worry that I am not getting enough to eat.  I rarely have much of an appetite and don't get much pleasure from eating.