Restricted Diet... yummm!

Well I finally have internet access from my laptop. It's a long story, but I ended up at emergency on Saturday night and then admitted to the hospital. I haven't been discharged yet! But I'm ok. These first 3 photos are of some of the various meals I've had during my "Clear Liquid Restricted Diet" period of my stay here. The first day I was here, I was only allowed to eat ice chips. No photos of those. I wanted to display the variety that was available during my 3 days of clear liquid meals. As you can see there is quite the assortment sugar and water. Juices were served to me in either "100% Pure Grape", "10%" Passion Orange or Apple Juice of the Aloha Maid brand. They were icy cold and sometimes even had slushy ice still in them! Yummy! What I couldn't understand about it was how it can be "100% Pure Grape Juice" when there were things listed in the ingredients like water, sugar, etc. I guess there are guidelines that allow packaged juices to claim they 100% juice that allow this. I am not a big fan of sugar juices, but given the circumstances this was a delight to have. My favorite was the "100% Apple Juice" which was concentrate and water. Another fruity part of the clear liquid diet is a "gel-type dessert". That just sounds so delicious! Anyway, the ones I was provided were sugar-free and from Kozy Shack. Oddly sugar-free items are another thing I don't enjoy eating. I didn't notice these were sugar-free and they tasted good. My favorite of the 2 flavors is the strawberry. Orange is the 2nd flavor. The main course of these clear liquid meals are the broths or soups. The various types were miso (soy bean paste), chicken and beef. I especially enjoyed the flavor of the beef broth. The meals came with a warm beverage which was either Lipton Black Tea or a coffee. I tended to prefer the teas flavor between these 2 drinks. This card came with my 2nd clear liquid meal. It was very interesting to see the meals were created by the chef of 3660 on the Rise. I know a chef can't have much control of my clear liquid diet. I just thought it was unusual for them to add this card to a clear liquid diet meal. Kind of like a teaser of what I was missing out on! This meal was sort of a hybrid. The Doctor changed my restriction from clear liquid to "full liquid" after lunch. When the clear liquid came for dinner, I was a bit disappointed. I asked if this was the full liquid and the wonderful dietary services person said it wasn't. When I told him that I was changed to full liquid, he said he'll go get some different things. He came back with the potato chowder, whole milk and vanilla pudding. He left the chicken broth and gel-type dessert also so I had extra food. What I did to "soup-up" this dinner was add the chicken broth to the potato chowder to give me a full hearty bowl of chicken potato chowder! Mmmmm. The potato chowder was very delicious! This is my first "Full Liquid" breakfast. It has a delicious Cream of Wheat type of cooked cereal, a different vanilla pudding and also my first box of "Boost Breeze". I added a bit of the milk to the cooked cereal because it's hard for me to drink so much whole milk straight. I usually drink non-fat or 2% milk. I also added some of the sugar to it and it tasted great! Just like Cream of Wheat at home. The Boost Breeze drink is a nutritional supplement that the Doctor added to my diet. It is a wild berry flavor that tastes nice; kind of like drinking unset Jello. It adds 250 calories and 9g of protein to my diet each serving. A little on the sweet side, but tastes nice. This is the Full Liquid lunch. It wasn't as impressive as the Cream of Wheat type breakfast because it was still the beef stock that the clear liquid meal comes with. The bonus was the Meadow Gold Watermelon Sherbet. It was a little thawed, which is understandable, still tasted good. There was also a Kozy Shack Vanilla Pudding which had a nice creamy texture with just the right amount of sweetness and tasty vanilla flavoring. With the addition of all these new liquid meal items, I tended to eat a lot slower. I found myself filling up with liquid. After this lunch, I was surprised with news of my next meal upgrade! The Doctor came in and said I could try a "Low Residue Diet" for dinner. I had no idea what low residue diet meant. I was expecting my next upgrade to be "Soft Foods". I skipped a level! Not knowing what low residue diet consisted of, I asked the Doctor and she said that the hospital dietitian would visit and explain how to choose and prepare low residue foods. Wikipedia has a pretty good description of the Low Residue Diet. When the dietitian arrived to counsel me on this special diet, I began to realize that everything she pointed out that was on the AVOID side of the list was everything I was eating prior to ending up here. Not only that, it has a lot of things that I particularly want to eat all the time on there like popcorn, nuts, pepper, sesame, whole grain breads, potato skins, olives, pickles, raw berries, crunchy peanut butter and strongly flavored cheeses! All those culprits are things I crave all the time!! There were things on the avoid list that I already found myself avoiding like coconut & brown rice (in my favorite Thai food dishes), raisins, broccoli and other raw vegetables. I used to like eating salads and vegetables, but I did notice it making me feel uncomfortable so I haven't been eating much in recent years. My first normal-ish meal is pictured above! It's a larger picture because it's soooo special! It was also a very impressively large proportioned meal! The main hot entree was a "Ono Kalua Pork" that was served with white rice (instead of brown) and the steamed vegetables. The Kalua Pork is a popular Hawaiian preparation. Normally it's a full pig roasted in an imu or underground fire pit type of oven. Obviously they don't prepare it like that here or in most restaurants. It was salted just right for me (not so salty) while also being very soft and moist. The steamed white rice and assorted vegetables were also delicious! Not having "real food" for 5 days may have played a factor in it, but it really was delicious. The other items consisted of cream of mushroom soup, chicken jook (rice porridge), tofu (soybean curd), soda crackers & a chocolate cream puff (Chef's Special) for dessert. The cream puff was yummy! Here is my "Low Residue Breakfast". This was my final meal in here because I was discharged before lunch arrived. Hmmm. I wonder what I missed out on for lunch?? Anyway, it was frenchtoast, Cream of Wheat and some beverages. I was able to select from the menu choices for this meal so I selected from the beverages a 1% milk, coffee and a hot chocolate. I went back to my favorite mocha recipie from about 20 years ago at the family drive-in, Megs. I added the Nestle Hot Cocoa mix to the cup of coffee and added some of the milk. It brought back memories. I also used to add freeze drived decaf Sanka back then to give it more of a coffee flavor. I didn't have any of that with this meal, but it still tasted good. Finally, I get to go home! I was in the hotel industry for 8 years which makes me want to thank all the wonderful people working on this floor at the hospital and in the emergency room. The Doctors, R.N.s, Nurse Aides, Charge Nurses & Housekeeping did a great job during my time at the hospital. I cannot imagine having to add the medical issues into my job tasks back at the hotel. This blog focused mostly on the food because I felt the subject was a better fit for my blog. I looked forward to the meals and enjoyed them everyday. Thanks Queen's Hospital! I feel great now! PS Thanks Randy & Josephine for helping w/ my escrows!