Housekeeping: Hello there, if you are new here be sure to check out the podcast too, link on the GAG.| eating life homepage. Soup. It’s a noun but one I use as a verb and an adjective. Rightly or wrongly. I am working on improving my gut biome. There’s nothing glamorous about gut biome for most people, but for me it’s a fascinating and challenging view on food we don’t often consider, and now for me one that requires extra special attention given my inability to eat most fresh fruit, berries, salad, seeds and nuts without some serious culinary intervention. Post head and neck cancer treatment (aka radiotherapy) sometimes I can eat that, but on other days, those ending with a “y”, I can’t. Or one week I am absolutely fine with a certain soup, the next week not so much. It makes it incredibly hard to meal plan and prep in advance. So improving gut biome has been challenging. Radiotherapy and the alterations it leaves to a “functioning swallow” I have had stages of difficulty of swallowing from the start to current day. I had a PEG tube inserted before I left hospital following radiotherapy, surgery and the nuance of swallowing was lost on me for the first 15 months, that is the nuance of texture, melt point, grip, slide and inhale risk. The things we learn. Cancer booklets on suggested food items available way back when, unhelpful in their suggested trail mix to keep protein levels up, baked beans on muffins (skin issue let alone the “muffin” issue) keep snacks in the car - ridiculous to think that any HNC patient was going to eat in the car. Five years on I have never eaten a snack in the car, I now, where possible plan phone calls around eating, meetings around eating and any face to face encounters around not only what I eat but my proximity to a mirror, bathroom and my water pikster. Back to the beans in question. In my quest to improve gut biome I have gone all out to eat more fruit, vegetable, nuts and seeds as 98% of my diet. I have just completed month one. I feel amazing, I have lost 3kgs in weight (6.62 pounds for those that operate in pounds) and I am starting to notice some very subtle changes to bloat, swelling, skin tone and eye clarity, and the dreaded radiotherapy frog spawn. It’s ever so improved, just the tiniest bit. Salads were lost to me for so long, previous posts I have talked about the bricks and mortar of my salads. I make hummus with chickpeas, organic tahini (seeds), loads of garlic and lemon juice and sometimes added fresh beetroot just for colour. My sister kindly donated some homegrown eggplant that were made into babaganoush again with added garlic, tahini, cumin and smoky paprika. These dollops of gloop held the structure of salad together for me. I’d add quinoa, pearl barley, roasted vegetable and oven baked pita wraps to scoop up the gloop!Avocado, roasted butternut squash and black beans, with purple onion, fresh herbs and vinaigrette dressings with olive oil, dijon mustard You get the idea. I had to experiment with beans - so I purchased navy beans and soaked them for 8 hours and then simmered them until tender for another 1-1.5 hours. I couldn’t manage them. Grainy, skin issues, like eating grit off the bottom of a budgie cage. I turned to my hike in Portugal, well Galicia actually and turfed those beans into a pot with beef broth, loads of sliced green cabbage, celery, onion, garlic and simmered away until it resembled one of the soups I had on my pilgrimage hike across Spain and Portugal. Then I blitzed the lot with a hand held blender until smooth and creamy. Success with the navy beans finally. Eating more fruit a bigger challenge again, I long gave up biting into an apple. Strawberries with their summery lusciousness have to be pureed and seeded, watermelon for me almost impossible, mango better but banana requires a great deal of concentration. Smoothie bowls of tinned peaches, silken tofu, organic chia seeds and topped with dairy free coconut yogurt and sprinkled with pan roasted pepita seeds, dessicated coconut, slithered almonds - all toasted just to the right texture to enable swallowing. Is this dedication to eating worth it? For me yes, I am not going to lie to you, it takes some time to get the hang of it, but I note the food shopping list remains constant with enough variation to mix up meals, I am eating a load more fruit, vegetable, protein and as a result a lot more nutrient dense food. I have all but eliminated bread, biscuits, sugar (other than a sneaky Biscoff - who ever created those things is a genius! ) and I have forgiven myself for not eating like I use to. I love soup and always have, now I embrace the fact they are the one constant food item in my eating repertoire. Eat well.GAG.| eating life is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Soup can be a noun referring to a liquid dish typically made by boiling meat, fish, or vegetables in ...
