Things I've Been Eating

Since being told I could move on to the soft food diet, I've been so happy! I wanted to share the things I've been eating.

Denver Scramble

This doesn't contain ham because I didn't have any, but I bought some yesterday and I plan to add it the next time around. I used egg beaters (forget exactly how much i made, I think around 3/4 cup in liquid form)... added 1/4 cup shredded colby jack cheese, salt and pepper, and diced up onions, red peppers, and green peppers. Next time I'll use ham and I'll also calculate out everything so I can share this as an actual recipe with nutritional info.

This was my prep:

Relish Tuna Salad

This is the first thing I ate when I came home and was allowed to try soft foods. It turned out so tasty. I used two small tuna packets which equaled about 5 ounces. Here is my 'recipe':

- 5 oz tuna

- 2 tbs light or fat free mayo

- 2 tsp mustard

-2 tsp sweet relish

- 2 tsp finely diced onion

Right now (2 1/2 weeks post op) I can eat about 2 to 2 1/2 ounces of this.

Edamame (Soy Beans)

I figured this was a good choice because it is both a vegetable AND a protein source. In general veggies or fruits should be a small portion of my meal right now but this had as much protein as some of the other things I've been eating... so I had 1 oz of these beans, sprinkled with sea salt, and 1 oz string cheese as my meal. The beans are fairly soft to begin with but I chewed them very well to make sure they were soft enough going down. I found this brand at Target and they are already fully cooked so I only have to nuke in the microwave for about 30-45 seconds and they are ready to go.

Frigo Light Mozzarella String Cheese

I picked out this brand of light string cheese to try (also from Target) and I am very happy with how it tastes. It tastes like full fat, delicious mozzarella. Each stick is one ounce... I thought maybe this was by weight (not volume) so I tore one up into pieces to see if it fit in my 1 oz shot glass, and it did. So it is truly a volumetric ounce. 1 oz has a whopping 8 grams of protein, wow! That's great. I have been having these with some of my meals, either a full stick or just half depending on what else I'm eating.

Cantaloupe

Figured this was good as a soft fruit... this is what I had for breakfast today with my egg beaters. I did about 1 1/2 ounces of the egg beaters and 1 ounce of the cantaloupe. I think I should do less cantaloupe next time though, keep my focus on the protein source. It tasted soooo delicious though :) Refreshing. This is my first fruit since surgery.... other than licking a cherry the other day LOL. Yep, licked it.

Chicken Salad

I do plan on making my own chicken salad and I have all the stuff to do so... but I LOVE the chicken salad they make at Target so I just had to get a container. It is so very tasty. I had 1 1/2 ounces of it with 1/2 ounce of light mozzarella.

These are the things I've been eating so far. I was posting some of the pics on Facebook today and a friend/loyal reader said she was surprised how much they let me eat and that she thought it would be a lot less. Keep in mind that I bought these small dishes expressly for the purpose of making my small portions look bigger and helping me feel more normal and satisfied. As a reminder, here is one of the photos from when I bought the dishes so you can see how small they are:

(Dinner plate, salad plate, my tiny appetizer plate)

It gave me an idea though, I'll have to put one of my meals on my regular dinner plate next time as a comparison. I guess I should look at it like, if my meals are looking large, then I accomplished my goal because that's what the small dishes were supposed to achieve :)