Food Lessons Learned From a Hospital Bed

1. When you’re on a liquid diet from surgery and they give you soup, don’t eat it in bed. Sit in a chair like a normal person, if possible. More of it ends up on you than in your mouth. My oh-so-fabulous gown can attest to this, even with napkin involvement.

2. What they present to you as “chocolate pudding” typically isn’t the said dessert. Think about it.

3. Don’t hang on to your juice from breakfast/lunch/dinner thinking you’ll make the nurses happy by drinking it later. It miraculously tastes 10 times worse than the first sip you took that made you think it would be a good idea to keep it in the first place. Either get it over with or pitch it.

4. The bottom line is that hospital food isn’t tasty at all. If anyone who ever reads this (ha!) is involved in hospital food preparation, I’m truly sorry but I have no idea what’s going on with you people. Yes, I said “you people.”

5. Any sort of diet you were trying to follow before your hospital stay generally goes out the window. Apparently, it’s all about the doc’s perception of what you need without ANY regard for your opinion, be it valid or invalid. Their ears can’t hear you.

They just took my food tray away. This is perhaps the highlight of my so-far 24-hour stay in the ER and surgery center.

Not that I frequent Red Lobster very often (their Cheddar Bay biscuits are phenomenal, though!), I had the clam chowder there one time and wanted to replicate it. But then I realized that it was just the heavy cream that I was into and not the actual clamminess of the concoction. I have a real passion for seafood and would like to make an entire seafood chowder at some point. However, the low-fat clam chowder recipe I used this evening can be found on low-fat-diet-recipes.com by Rob posted on 8 July 2007. The recpie is as follows…

Ingredients:
2 medium russet potatoes, peeled and cut into 1/2-inch cubes
1 tbsp butter
1 cup onions, finely diced
1 cup celery, finely diced
1/2 cup flour
4 cans chopped clams (6 1/2 oz)
2 (8 oz) bottles clam juice
1 oz turkey bacon, diced
1 cup of 2% milk
1 tsp salt
1 dash pepper
1/2 tsp sugar
1/2 tsp thyme
1 tsp lemon juice

Directions:
Place diced potatoes in large sauce pan and cover with cold water. Bring potatoes to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low. Cover and let cook for 10 minutes. Drain the potatoes and set aside.

Once the potatoes are simmering, place butter in another saucepan, and heat over medium heat. Add the celery and onions, and stir. Sautee until tender, stirring often, about 4 minutes. Stir in the flour. Reduce heat to low and cook for 10 minutes. Remove from heat.

In the large saucepan that had the potatoes, add the bottled calm juice, and the clam juice from the canned clams. Add in the diced bacon, and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 1 minute. Gradually whisk the clam juice/bacon into the vegetable/flour mixture until smooth. Heat over medium-high heat. Add the potatoes, milk, and salt, pepper, thyme, sugar, lemon juice. Stir often, until heated through. Stir in clams and heat for about 1 minute.

I did enjoy this chowder. However, I felt as though it could have been thicker somehow. I also used a form of bacon bits instead of cooking a piece of turkey bacon because at this initial stage of the cooking game, I’m still a little reluctant to handle raw meat. But I think this worked out fine for the time being.

As someone who is trying to watch salt intake, I’d suggest not putting any in the pan and just using it to taste. I may also suggest for someone who likes potatoes to cut them a little bigger so they’re more present in the meal. Other than that, it was a first time chowder success.

If anyone has a good low-fat recipe for Manhattan clam chowder or another tweak to this recipe, let me know.