More Things I've Been Eating

I think I'll be doing these posts regularly, sort of as an update of various things I'm eating at different stages. I've eaten a bunch more different things since my last post so I thought I would share! At this point I am 3 1/2 weeks out and still in the semi-solid soft food stage. I'm still not eating anything crunchy or too difficult to chew.

So without further ado, here are some more things I've been eating lately.

I ate some of this pot roast a couple of times. While the flavor is absolutely delicious, I still find this to be a little too much chewing for me right now. Also I could only eat a small amount of the package before it went bad. Might be better when Ian can eat it too so we can get more use out of it while it's fresh. (The beans you see are edamame.)

I shared the egg beaters in my last post but this is just to show that I decided to add some ham. That was REALLY tasty and made it just like an omlette. :) I used thinly sliced deli ham so there wasn't too much chewing involved.

This is the same Market Pantry chicken salad that I mentioned in my last food post... here I had some diced pears with it, from a fruit cup. Funny thing... I always LOVED fruit cup pears before and now they tasted sickeningly sweet. I didn't care for them.

This was a breakfast one day. The colors look funky and I can't seem to fix it... but it's 2 ounces of cottage cheese with a swirl of yogurt mixed in... and 1 ounce of cantaloupe. I still absolutely love cantaloupe and I wish I could just sit down and eat the whole container of it, but I have only had a few small chunks since I am trying to stay focused on my protein intake.

Hormel chili... I buy the no beans one and add my own so that I can have a much higher proportion of beans. This is made up of 1 oz dark red kidney beans and 1 oz chili, plus 1/4 cup shredded cheese. It's pretty yummy... the picture looks gross, sorry. It really is yummy.

Ahhh, Morningstar Farms breakfast sausage patties!!! I love these. They are a meatless, soy based product. I have liked them for years, ever since a vegetarian roommate introduced me to them. I don't care for real sausage so I make these a lot. Now post op I am appreciating them even more because of their high protein and low calorie counts. I put a little cheese on top to make it more moist and tasty. The bottom pic with my hand in it is so you can get an idea of the size.

This morning I got even more creative and added some egg beaters on top:

Have to say this is a SUPER satisfying breakfast. 1 oz egg beaters and 1/2 slice american cheese were added. All in all makes for a breakfast with 15 grams protein. Excellent.

And here is another Morningstar Farms product I like:

Do they taste exactly like a real chicken nugget? No. But I do like them. Good flavor and spices to it. Each nugget has 3 grams protein. I am NOT able to eat 3 nuggets, I discovered. So I eat 1/2 a string cheese with 2 nuggets for a total of 10 grams protein in the meal. I use nowhere near that much ranch.

I tried these fish fillets... seemed like an easy way to get some fish. They were OK but not something I'd buy again. I'll have to try making some of my own fish :) I was able to eat 1/2 this fillet, 2 ounces.

A shrimp cocktail... can we say heaven? Delicious cold shrimp and the kick of the cocktail sauce, oh yum. Shrimp are amazingly high in protein! This was 2 ounces and had 14 grams protein! I barely touched the sauce, will have to serve much less next time. Probably used not even 1/2 a tablespoon. I will definitely be eating shrimp often!! Low cal, no carbs, high protein and delicious!

 Banana with peanut butter! I might be the only person who has never combined these foods. Everyone says how much they love it. But personally I was always afraid of trying it for some reason. It just didnt appeal to me. I decided to go for it though and i loved it! This is 1/2 a very small banana cut into slices with a TBS of peanut butter split between the pieces. I saved the other half of the banana in some tin foil in the freezer, planning to have it later. I had heard bananas had protein so I thought the combo would be a very high protein snack, but in this small of a portion the banana comes out to zero protein. I probably won't have this too often but it would be great for satisfying a sweet tooth :)