I think it shows a marvelous sensitivity to cultural diversity for the NHS to serve you the digestive juices of the Mongolian Yak as a first course. They did warm it to just the right temp I hope.
As for the other, I wonder did someone else all ready have a go at it?
I don't understand you people. It's quite clear that this is (hang on... let me look at the menu card) er... chicken and leek soup followed by cheese and potato bake with garden peas. Yum. I love the way the chicken has been pre-masticated and then shredded. I think there was a spelling mistake it's actually leak... not leek!
My God! Are they serving up the lunchtime dish water now?! I've been reading your Blog for about a week now and tonight's offering has moved me to actually posting my reaction... And what did they use to bake the cheese and potato? A candle? I wish you a speedy recovery Traction Man - which will be a flippin' miracle going by the paucity of nutritious meals... Bring on more smoked salmon...
Chicken soup, ok. now that you say it ... but why did they bother to bake the cheese and potato when they later went on to discard both the lower and the upper crust before serving? Or else why call it a bake? Take consolation in the banana, and in the next salmon bagel to come your way! Have strengthening dreams!!
Have you asked them to up your medication to counteract the nosh? I reckon the right level of opiates and those peas could be waving to you from the gravy sea. Shame you're not in Hope Hospital in Salford. My other half was in there recently and the food was very good (pie and mash, since you ask (well, we are in The North, so 'ethnic' food is expected)). Thank heavens he was ill as I scoffed most of it (bit of a bummer my brew was in a DIRTY mug). Given my extensive knowledge of pies, I reckon it was a Hollands one as well. This means either the food was very good, or I have no taste buds.
If all those peas were eaten by all the patients each day, the air in the ward would be.... ugh. Maybe the gas produced would kill swine flu particles? Maybe that's the cunning plan.....
I've been following your blog for the last 10 days and have now, after seeing tonight's offerings, been moved to post.
I normally reside in the South West but am temporarily in West Yorkshire looking after a family member with terminal cancer. Lucky for him, I'm a great cook. ;o)
If I was at home, I would gladly visit with a hamper of supplies.
Hang in there - no pun intended - and keep up the blogging.
Sending you much love and every good wish for a speedy recovery.
Thanks, Cate. Sorry to hear about your relative. I live two hours from the hospital so it's a long way for my family to come and visit. My wife visits each Saturday by train and brings food and fruit etc. The rest of the week I try to eat what I can but end up drinking protein milkshake supplements. It's rather boring. The hospital staff try hard and do their best to get me the occasional treat but a lot of the food is cook chill factory stuff and will never be of high nutritional quality.
This is strange. Being in the Forces I spend a lot of time away from home. I certainly don't get a weekly visit. Yet I still manage to avoid canteen food. Get your missus to bring a weeks supply of fresh fruit and pulses.Bananas, oranges, apples , mixed nuts etc. Then food that you can just add water to. Then food you can microwave. My missus is a nurse so please don't tell me there's no microwave in your hospital. They're lying to you. With a weekly visit you are guaranted a good diet. I go away for 3 months at a time and eat well with no need for canteen food.
Big fit soldier such as yourself might find it a bit easier to manage their own food. I'm tied to a bed and have to call a nurse for almost anything to be brought to me. I can see that might be a problem. The ward isn't exactly overstaffed. Secondly, a large bone like the femur needs an amazing amount of nutrition to grow enough callous bone to encase the diseased bits. This involves eating salmon, steak, full-cream milk, cheese and other high quality proteins. You're asking a lot for me to be able to manage that by myself. It's ok when you're fit, but after nine months of illness I'm not sure I'm able to do as well as you do in feeding myself.
That looks so disgusting I don't even want to think about it. I normally manage to laugh but this one just about made me cry. Is there absolutely no way of being txf'd nearer to home? Please keep your chin up. Zoe
I'm afraid to tell you that the food will be no better there. This is a specialist hospital and the medical care and doctors are superb. Thanks for caring.
Dear TM - have been following your dead good blog for some time since I read about you in the papers but today felt I had to pass comment on the soup which seems to be full of maggots... I have some stories to tell you about hospital food which could end up too long and boring. But when my husband was in hospital here in Spain having a hip replacement I cooked food for him every day, as the Spanish hospital food was (to him) totally inedible (swimming in olive oil and garlic), also like a previous commentator the nurses put the food totally out of his reach, then shouted at him for not eating... and I carried my offerings on public transport every day, my journey took one and half hours each way - how's that for devotion!
My wife works but I shall tell her about your devotion, Old Dragon. Mind you, if I suggest she does the same I will probably end up eating through a straw. Not a bad idea in this place.
Dear TM, as well as the deplorable food have you been struck down by 'the students'? I spent 2 weeks in a London hospital with double pneumonia many moons ago, and the consultant kept bringing round spotty youths to listen to my chest, they even came in their spare time to check my wheezing.... Later on I might regale you with my food stories from this time, it could help you sleep...
Traction Man, you sound a bit low today? It must be seriously bloody awful in there, almost like being in prison, but with worse food. Being tied to the bed makes things doubly dreadful. I bet they don't even do that in Guantamano (is it still open for customers?). PLEASE know that you have a huge crowd of suppporters out here who follow your blogging with admiration and relish (unlike your hospital food!). I am sure I can say that we all wholeheartedly wish you a very speedy recovery, and, if we knew where you were would flood you with gourmet food parcels, visits and jolly chats to keep your pecker up. Keep up the good work (and your chin!).
Hanks for the kind message. I've developed a cold and sore throat (I wonder why?) and to cap it all the tv aerial doesn't work in this new multi-million pound hospital. I know there's probably nothing on but Sundays can really drag so even trashy television might help a bit.
I’m sorry, TM, I can only beam you virtual breakfast (and lunch):
This would be a nice sunday breakfast: http://op-expat.com/2008/11/breaking-your-fast-in-austria/
A hospital breakfast here might look like this youth hostel tray: http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1249945724063406724ZKOoUS
This is tipical Sunday lunch fare: http://op-expat.com/2009/01/lunching-in-austria-part-1/
I’m sorry you caught a cold in top of everything else!! Order in fried chicken, a freshly fried chicken contains a lot of substances that help fighting illnesses. I would bring you a chicken myself if I could. When I was studying history of Christianity many years ago, we heard about the healing powers of chicken, apparently chicken were looked at as the universal medicine against all ailments in the middle ages. But there lived a group of zealous people then who were afraid of committing sins after their baptism, because they did not believe they would be forgiven sins anymore after their baptism; so they only got themselves baptized when they had the impression to be on their death bed anyway, and refused to eat anything more after it, not even chicken. Strange story, but I have used chicken as medicine quite often since then; I think they have even done scientific research on it somewhere; apparently people with congested noses have them free sooner when they eat chicken as it is the case with those who don’t. - Best wishes, Barbara
I found this research on chicken soup: http://www.chestjournal.org/content/118/4/1150.long Maybe chicken soup is better, but chicken helps, too. Better than bingo food anyway, if you ask me. Greetings! Barbara
Just a note to say I hope you get over the sore throat, cold very soon. I can not imagine the misery that adds to your current situation.
On the brighter side I do believe a committee is being formed to review the food in hospital problem. That committee will then branch off into several sub committee. Each of these sub commitees will have a subset of study groups. The findings of these study groups will be reviewed and committed on by the subcommittee that formed that study group. The additions and deletions submitted will be reviewed by their respective focus groups. So you end up with such things as "Focus group on the budgetary considerations for the implementation of increased fresh steamed broccoli servings for NHS patients with non restricted dietary requirements*" "*please see report from "The proper method of cooking and serving fresh broccolli" focus group. As reported to the "Fresh vegetable cookery guideline study group."
Can you tell I worked for government? True just a local municipality but the principles remain the same.
One of my duties was to take minutes at our weekly meetings. Now these minutes were preserved in binders (pre computer days.) as were minutes going back several years.
I one day came to the discovery that all those damn minutes were essentially the same. Yes the topics, the discussion of them, the conclusions and the rediscussions never, ever changed. I could open up minute meetings for June 12, 1985 and they would be slap dap indistinguishable from the Oct 9, 1999 minutes. Yet the meetings continued.
Sure you could fake a sudden heart attack and the nice paramedics would whisk you away. But the next week you still had to show up. Worse during any absence you were most likely to be named to head up one of those study groups. Cruel fate that.
So I suspect NHS will continue to jabber on about the problem all the while serving up grammar school paste and dog sick to the masses.
Looks like gruel and the dinner? Chuckup and peas? Had you already attempted to eat it and it came back up again?
ReplyDeleteant and hay soup! but there's a banana on the side! yey!
ReplyDeleteThe banana has been saved for emergencies
ReplyDeleteye gods - this is more than an emergency!!!!!!!!!
ReplyDeletegood luck
susan
The soup: no idea. Maybe it's flaked fish? or oatmeal? or both?
ReplyDeleteThe main course: peas!! with ananas chunks in creme chantilly? but why did they put the dessert on the same plate as the peas??
Very strange food indeed.
gruel and unusual pea-neshment perhaps?
ReplyDeleteJust count your blessings that the plate is White. Imagine that against floral. Yuck.
ReplyDeleteThe soup looks like something very much diseased. Ewww. I feel for you. Eat that banana!
ReplyDeleteSawdust soup followed by potato a la creme with green bullets (again) Enjoy the Banana !
ReplyDeleteI think it shows a marvelous sensitivity to cultural diversity for the NHS to serve you the digestive juices of the Mongolian Yak as a first course. They did warm it to just the right temp I hope.
ReplyDeleteAs for the other, I wonder did someone else all ready have a go at it?
Paula
Dear Traction Man,
ReplyDeleteI hope you gave your wife an emergency call for something to eat!
For me it looks like the hospital knows already from this blog and your meals are the answers.....
Take care!
Greetings from Germany
cream of water ?
ReplyDeleteYuck And Double Yuck
ReplyDeleteThe peas look ok I would try eating them.
Sorry, Traction Man - you've got me completely stumped this time. I would suggest, however, that the soup is the main course liquidised.
ReplyDeletei'm stumped with the second dish though.
ReplyDeleteThe bottom one looks like a mash picture of Santa with a green beard. Been playing with your food, Traction Man?
ReplyDeleteI don't understand you people. It's quite clear that this is (hang on... let me look at the menu card) er... chicken and leek soup followed by cheese and potato bake with garden peas. Yum. I love the way the chicken has been pre-masticated and then shredded. I think there was a spelling mistake it's actually leak... not leek!
ReplyDeleteNo words. None.
ReplyDeleteMy God! Are they serving up the lunchtime dish water now?! I've been reading your Blog for about a week now and tonight's offering has moved me to actually posting my reaction... And what did they use to bake the cheese and potato? A candle?
ReplyDeleteI wish you a speedy recovery Traction Man - which will be a flippin' miracle going by the paucity of nutritious meals... Bring on more smoked salmon...
Chicken soup, ok. now that you say it ... but why did they bother to bake the cheese and potato when they later went on to discard both the lower and the upper crust before serving? Or else why call it a bake? Take consolation in the banana, and in the next salmon bagel to come your way! Have strengthening dreams!!
ReplyDeleteCock-a-leekie soup is a fine Scottish dish if done well. Cheap, easy and nutritious.
ReplyDeleteDoes help though if it looks eatable and not pulverished to mush.
I would recommend a way that combines Jewish with Vietnamese cookery: steam your leeks, braise your chicken - garlic, bay leaf etc, etc; finely chop both when cooked and make into meatballs. Use your stocks to produce a fine consommé and simmer meatballs therein until hot. Spicy meatballs an option, or plain for the tender palate and stomach.
Bit time consuming for a busy hospital kitchen maybe, so just cook, cut and serve. Add poached prunes for authenticity.
Do not though pass it through an industrial shredder.
Have you asked them to up your medication to counteract the nosh? I reckon the right level of opiates and those peas could be waving to you from the gravy sea. Shame you're not in Hope Hospital in Salford. My other half was in there recently and the food was very good (pie and mash, since you ask (well, we are in The North, so 'ethnic' food is expected)). Thank heavens he was ill as I scoffed most of it (bit of a bummer my brew was in a DIRTY mug). Given my extensive knowledge of pies, I reckon it was a Hollands one as well. This means either the food was very good, or I have no taste buds.
ReplyDeleteIf all those peas were eaten by all the patients each day, the air in the ward would be.... ugh. Maybe the gas produced would kill swine flu particles? Maybe that's the cunning plan.....
ReplyDeleteI reckon you should just eat your sheets. They've got to be more digestible than that lot.
ReplyDeleteAnd the pillows for dessert?
ReplyDeleteNoooo - TM - noooo - it's just not right.
ReplyDeleteWhen's the earliest you can get out of there?
Deepest sympathies.
Yet more peas.
ReplyDeleteSo, this meal cost the health service AT MOST £0.59.
One might ask how on earth this can be managed, but the evidence is there in shades of beige and some green.
I would like to be home for Christmas unless they sling me out for blogging and being ungrateful.
ReplyDeleteMy goodness. What an absolute nightmare.
ReplyDeleteI've been following your blog for the last 10 days and have now, after seeing tonight's offerings, been moved to post.
I normally reside in the South West but am temporarily in West Yorkshire looking after a family member with terminal cancer. Lucky for him, I'm a great cook. ;o)
If I was at home, I would gladly visit with a hamper of supplies.
Hang in there - no pun intended - and keep up the blogging.
Sending you much love and every good wish for a speedy recovery.
Cate x
Thanks, Cate. Sorry to hear about your relative. I live two hours from the hospital so it's a long way for my family to come and visit. My wife visits each Saturday by train and brings food and fruit etc. The rest of the week I try to eat what I can but end up drinking protein milkshake supplements. It's rather boring. The hospital staff try hard and do their best to get me the occasional treat but a lot of the food is cook chill factory stuff and will never be of high nutritional quality.
ReplyDeleteTM x
This is strange. Being in the Forces I spend a lot of time away from home. I certainly don't get a weekly visit. Yet I still manage to avoid canteen food.
ReplyDeleteGet your missus to bring a weeks supply of fresh fruit and pulses.Bananas, oranges, apples , mixed nuts etc.
Then food that you can just add water to. Then food you can microwave.
My missus is a nurse so please don't tell me there's no microwave in your hospital. They're lying to you.
With a weekly visit you are guaranted a good diet. I go away for 3 months at a time and eat well with no need for canteen food.
Big fit soldier such as yourself might find it a bit easier to manage their own food. I'm tied to a bed and have to call a nurse for almost anything to be brought to me. I can see that might be a problem. The ward isn't exactly overstaffed. Secondly, a large bone like the femur needs an amazing amount of nutrition to grow enough callous bone to encase the diseased bits. This involves eating salmon, steak, full-cream milk, cheese and other high quality proteins. You're asking a lot for me to be able to manage that by myself. It's ok when you're fit, but after nine months of illness I'm not sure I'm able to do as well as you do in feeding myself.
ReplyDeleteThat looks so disgusting I don't even want to think about it. I normally manage to laugh but this one just about made me cry. Is there absolutely no way of being txf'd nearer to home? Please keep your chin up. Zoe
ReplyDeleteI'm afraid to tell you that the food will be no better there. This is a specialist hospital and the medical care and doctors are superb. Thanks for caring.
ReplyDeleteHi Traction Man! I'm beaming you some late summer sunday morning sunrays over from Styria, maybe they help a little bit. Best wishes! Barbara
ReplyDeleteHank you, Barbara. Rays greatfully received. Can you arrange a nice Austrian breakfast too?
ReplyDeleteDear TM - have been following your dead good blog for some time since I read about you in the papers but today felt I had to pass comment on the soup which seems to be full of maggots... I have some stories to tell you about hospital food which could end up too long and boring. But when my husband was in hospital here in Spain having a hip replacement I cooked food for him every day, as the Spanish hospital food was (to him) totally inedible (swimming in olive oil and garlic), also like a previous commentator the nurses put the food totally out of his reach, then shouted at him for not eating... and I carried my offerings on public transport every day, my journey took one and half hours each way - how's that for devotion!
ReplyDeleteMy wife works but I shall tell her about your devotion, Old Dragon. Mind you, if I suggest she does the same I will probably end up eating through a straw. Not a bad idea in this place.
ReplyDeleteDear TM, as well as the deplorable food have you been struck down by 'the students'? I spent 2 weeks in a London hospital with double pneumonia many moons ago, and the consultant kept bringing round spotty youths to listen to my chest, they even came in their spare time to check my wheezing.... Later on I might regale you with my food stories from this time, it could help you sleep...
ReplyDeleteTraction Man, you sound a bit low today? It must be seriously bloody awful in there, almost like being in prison, but with worse food. Being tied to the bed makes things doubly dreadful. I bet they don't even do that in Guantamano (is it still open for customers?). PLEASE know that you have a huge crowd of suppporters out here who follow your blogging with admiration and relish (unlike your hospital food!). I am sure I can say that we all wholeheartedly wish you a very speedy recovery, and, if we knew where you were would flood you with gourmet food parcels, visits and jolly chats to keep your pecker up. Keep up the good work (and your chin!).
ReplyDeleteHanks for the kind message. I've developed a cold and sore throat (I wonder why?) and to cap it all the tv aerial doesn't work in this new multi-million pound hospital. I know there's probably nothing on but Sundays can really drag so even trashy television might help a bit.
ReplyDeleteI’m sorry, TM, I can only beam you virtual breakfast (and lunch):
ReplyDeleteThis would be a nice sunday breakfast:
http://op-expat.com/2008/11/breaking-your-fast-in-austria/
A hospital breakfast here might look like this youth hostel tray:
http://travel.webshots.com/photo/1249945724063406724ZKOoUS
This is tipical Sunday lunch fare:
http://op-expat.com/2009/01/lunching-in-austria-part-1/
I’m sorry you caught a cold in top of everything else!! Order in fried chicken, a freshly fried chicken contains a lot of substances that help fighting illnesses. I would bring you a chicken myself if I could. When I was studying history of Christianity many years ago, we heard about the healing powers of chicken, apparently chicken were looked at as the universal medicine against all ailments in the middle ages. But there lived a group of zealous people then who were afraid of committing sins after their baptism, because they did not believe they would be forgiven sins anymore after their baptism; so they only got themselves baptized when they had the impression to be on their death bed anyway, and refused to eat anything more after it, not even chicken. Strange story, but I have used chicken as medicine quite often since then; I think they have even done scientific research on it somewhere; apparently people with congested noses have them free sooner when they eat chicken as it is the case with those who don’t. - Best wishes, Barbara
I found this research on chicken soup: http://www.chestjournal.org/content/118/4/1150.long
ReplyDeleteMaybe chicken soup is better, but chicken helps, too. Better than bingo food anyway, if you ask me. Greetings! Barbara
Traction Man,
ReplyDeleteJust a note to say I hope you get over the sore throat, cold very soon. I can not imagine the misery that adds to your current situation.
On the brighter side I do believe a committee is being formed to review the food in hospital problem. That committee will then branch off into several sub committee. Each of these sub commitees will have a subset of study groups. The findings of these study groups will be reviewed and committed on by the subcommittee that formed that study group. The additions and deletions submitted will be reviewed by their respective focus groups. So you end up with such things as "Focus group on the budgetary considerations for the implementation of increased fresh steamed broccoli servings for NHS patients with non restricted dietary requirements*" "*please see report from "The proper method of cooking and serving fresh broccolli" focus group. As reported to the "Fresh vegetable cookery guideline study group."
Expect rapid changes within the next 25 years.
Paula
Classic! I love it.
ReplyDeleteCan you tell I worked for government? True just a local municipality but the principles remain the same.
ReplyDeleteOne of my duties was to take minutes at our weekly meetings. Now these minutes were preserved in binders (pre computer days.) as were minutes going back several years.
I one day came to the discovery that all those damn minutes were essentially the same. Yes the topics, the discussion of them, the conclusions and the rediscussions never, ever changed. I could open up minute meetings for June 12, 1985 and they would be slap dap indistinguishable from the Oct 9, 1999 minutes. Yet the meetings continued.
Sure you could fake a sudden heart attack and the nice paramedics would whisk you away. But the next week you still had to show up. Worse during any absence you were most likely to be named to head up one of those study groups. Cruel fate that.
So I suspect NHS will continue to jabber on about the problem all the while serving up grammar school paste and dog sick to the masses.
Paula
"Guess the flavour..."
ReplyDeleteBrocolli and stilton.