Stomach Peg Original Soup(tm) SPOS I’m not a Chef

Stomach Peg Original Soup(tm) SPOS I’m not a Chef

S’ppose you are not a chef. Ok, so you are not a chef. You grew up with a microwave and your microwave loves you. You don’t have the time or energy to make your own soup. Trust me there are days when getting out of the chair and going to the kitchen is an Act of God that needs to be premeditated. You finally convince yourself that you can walk with a blanket wrapped around you all the way to a kitchen (during the next TV commercial). You can use pre-made soups. However, there are a couple of rules of thumb to keep in mind.

Avoid soups with meat in it. I’m not a vegetarian, and right now I’m thinking about a porterhouse steak, but that aside pureed meat don’t screen that well. They tend to block the screen so you spend a lot of time dumping out the screen, which when you are already tired and cranky is bad.

Pick soups with starch already in it. Minestrone was one of my favorites- a little pasta, lots of veggies, and more importantly most of my friends could make it and bring it over to the house. I thought of it as lasagna in a soup. Rice soups are OK just remember, you have to puree a long time. Potato and Leeks Soup was a nice change of pace, especially if tomatoes upset your stomach. I could not get enough split pea soup. I could eat a couple of spoonful orally and the rest went down the peg.

Add Soy Powder. Since we left out the protein in the soup you will still need to add your own protein. I was able to bring soymilk with whey powder through my whole radiation recovery which helped me get all the protein I needed.

Add Spice. I’m not talking hot sauce or black pepper, I’m talking the anti-cancer spices and powders. My liver was running some above normal indicators in my blood screening. My medical team agreed that Milk Thistle supplement was a good thing to add to my diet. I could swallow the pill or break it open and add it to me soup (depending on how I felt that day).

REMEMBER: Comfort of having soup is key. Although I tout trying to make sure there is as much nutrition as possible, there are many days when the smell of a comfort food is the best medicine. Just because the soup is pre-made does not mean that there isn’t any love in the soup.

Enjoy,

Jeff Scott Hoyland

Working before Radiation after major Chemo

Stomach Peg Original Soup™ SPOS STARCH ADD ONS

Stomach Peg Original Soup™ SPOS STARCH ADD ONS

PASTA:
When going through radiation you are going to lose weight. Dana Farber worked with me to minimize the amount of weight I lost per week. Since I wasn’t going to consume 12 cans of “Nutritional supplements from a can” per day, I needed to add starch into my diet. I found that over-cooked pasta worked best. The shape of the pasta didn’t matter because you were going to puree it up anyway. You really need to over cook the pasta, because when you use the immersion wand to puree it, it needs to have very few lumps. Whole wheat pasta needs to be cooked longer, I usually cooked the pasta on high for ten minutes and then simmered for a half hour TV program.(1) Pour the water out until you have about equal parts pasta and water, then puree. Yes it looks terrible. Its just a milky white broth. Trust me it even worse when you let it chill in the refrigerator! This is why I kept it separate from the Basic SPOS.

POTATO:
It works wonderfully. Basically, you are adding mash potatoes to the SPOS. The biggest problem is that your kids will eat it before you get a chance to use it

RICE
I never really found a way to over cook the rice and puree it into a mash that I could strain. I will admit that I am not an expert rice cooker, so in the hands of a master or at least an experienced rice chef it should work very well.

OTHER STARCH:
Basically if you can puree it you can use it. The purpose is to pick a starch that the patient finds appealing when it is not pureed. If I could have found a way to puree a rib-eye I would have!

RECIPE INSTRUCTIONS:
Just before you strain the SPOS into the microwave safe mixing bowl, pour/push the starch through the strainer. I typically used about a ½ cup of starch. Then pour the SPOS through the strainer. Before you microwave the bowl, stir the soup to gage the thickness of the soup.

Enjoy

Jeff Scott

(1) It is a known fact that I spent hours huddled in a comforter in the big easy chair watching Ellen and American Chopper. My cooking habits tended to run in half hour increments.

Middle of Radiation with Chemo-lite

Stomach Peg Original Soup(tm) SPOS

Stomach Peg Original Soup™ SPOS Updated June 13th, 2011

8/2016 Update:  I own a Vitamix now which is perfect for blending and pureeing.  I don't use the immersion wand anymore.  However, I will leave the directions as originally written, for those who do not have a blender strong enough

Preface:
When they told me that I had to have a stomach peg, and that I would have to pour 10 cans a day of brown nutrients down the tube, my wife, Randi, was horrified. Randi is an organic general vegetarian and nothing on the side of the Abbott Laboratories Ross Nutrition Jevity 1.5 Cal high-protein nutrition with fiber sounded anything like “ORGANIC” or “NATURAL”. I personally have a fondness for Food Network and Whole Foods produce, so I wasn’t excited either. Suppose you wanted organic? S’ppose you wanted Natural? S'pos? Hence, Randi made the first batch of SPOS. Now SPOS did not replace the Jevity, but it did give me the sense of real food I needed to recover. I am convinced that between the SPOS and the Jevity, I kept my body healthy and could endure the months of Radiation.

DEDICATION: this soup is dedicated to Sue Broderick, another Cancer survivor, who provided me with many homemade soups during my cancer Treatment.

STOMACH PEG ORIGINAL SOUP™ RECIPE (Basic Stock)(1)

7 leaves of Kale Chopped
7 finely chopped carrots
2 turnips finely chopped
1 Onion finely chopped
2 celery stalks finely chopped
1-2 teaspoons of turmeric
1 DASH of Bell’s Seasoning
1 teaspoon of salt (2)
4 tablespoons of Soy Powder
1/4 cup Extra Virgin Olive Oil
1 Mystery vegetable (finely chopped) (3)


Set a pot on the stove capable of holding over a gallon of liquid, fill the pot ¾ full and turn the stove onto HIGH. Chop and add all the vegetables. When the pot comes to a boil add the salt, Bell’s, and turmeric. Stir pot to mix spices and then turn the heat down to simmer for one to two hours (4). When the vegetables are all tender to the point of mushy, turn off heat, and use an Immersion Hand Blender to puree everything in the pot (5). The soup should be thick but not as thick as pea soup

Now that you have a big pot of Basic SPOS you can add starch, protein, and other items (see later post on my BLOG)
To use SPOS you will still need to run the stock through a strainer to remove the pieces too large pieces which won’t fit through the tube. As a rule of thumb, I used about two cups of SPOS at any meal. I would ladle 2 cup worth of SPOS into a microwave safe measuring bowl and then use a hand strainer into another measuring bowl. If the soup is thicker than your nutritional supplement, thin with water or boxed chicken/vegetable stock.
After straining SPOS, heat it in the microwave until finger touch warm (6). Give a quick stir to even the temperature out. You find that room temperature or warmer liquids settle in the stomach better.

Enjoy

Jeff Scott Hoyland

(1) In subsequent blogs I will post variations of the soup. My wife, Randi can attest that it is very heartbreaking caring for a loved one like me for two reasons – there is not much you can do, and I was grumpy as a bear. Taking the time to make home soup was as comforting to her as it was to me.
(2) Talk with your doctor/nutritionist about the amount of salt you should use. Its soup! It has to have some salt.
(3) What looks great in the produce aisle, remember you can only taste this soup when you burp. The goal is to pack as much nutrition into the soup, so pick one great looking vegetable
(4) The softer the vegetables are, the smaller they can be pureed and the more nutrition you can pour down the tube. Yea, the chef in me hated the fact that I over-cooked my vegetables.
(5) Don’t puree the soup while its boiling hot, but I found I could get better results while the soup was still warm
(6) It just like warming milk for a baby. Follow the same rules of thumb or nipple as the case might be.

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Just before Cancer Treatment