Theme
2:19am November 27, 2014

UMAMI Midnight snack, gastroparesis edition

Broth is completely safe for me as long as I drink it in moderation. It goes right in me and right out my g-tube just like when I drink ginger ale to help drain my stomach (long story, you don’t want to know while I’m talking about food).

So yesterday I went out to the store and bought:

* Vegetable bouillon cubes without salt
* Vegetable bouillon cubes with sea salt
* Vegetable bouillon cubes with herbs
* Beef bouillon cubes
* Chicken bouillon cubes
* Miso soup mix (I’ll strain out any solids and drink the broth)

All this time with a feeding tube, the one taste I’ve craved above all others is umami. Umami is my favorite flavor hands down. If all the food I had to eat for the rest of my life was umami, I would not have a problem eating it.

And the preparation is so simple that even I can handle it, on a good day executive function-wise (and I know even this can be hard – it can for me too – but sometimes it is relatively easy):

1. Put bouillon cube in cup.
2. Put water in cup.
3. Put cup in microwave.
4. Press “Beverage”
5. Wait for microwave to bleep.
6. Take cup out.
7. Break up remaining bouillon cube parts with fork
8. Stir vigorously
9. Wait until temperature is right (this is the hardest part for me, the physical impulse to grab the cup and drink is stronger than the rational impulse to wait).
10. Drink.
11. Don’t lie down for quite awhile, wait for it to be drained from my system a bit first.

In the time it’s taken me to write this post, a quarter of what I just drank has been drained into my drainage bag, and it’s still going. So aspiration risk is low. And as I said, I’ve already drank this amount of liquid before, just not flavored in this form. So this isn’t new territory except for the amazing wonderful umami taste.

BTW, so far my favorites are the vegetable herb cubes and the beef cubes. I think the miso may end up being my favorite (and if it is, I might want to look into getting that miso paste that people make miso soup out of) but I haven’t tried that yet. I generally like red miso, and I think that’s what I got from the picture on the cover, even though it didn’t specifically say.

Notes:
  1. setavulos said: if you want to make miso soup broth, try finding dashi stock instead of using plain water with the miso paste. it’ll taste more like actual miso soup. miso paste is sometimes hard to dissolve, which i think you should know before you buy it.
  2. fullyarticulatedgoldskeleton said: That’s awesome! Yay!
  3. thetigerwasariver said: there is many types of miso-paste so if you get into that you will have variation too! (this reminds me I should get some myself, yumm)
  4. ajax-daughter-of-telamon said: whoa, I never knew veggie bouillon existed
  5. withasmoothroundstone posted this