Guess the soup!
I think I’ve been rumbled and someone has made a big effort with the vegetable portion but I still don't understand why broccoli has to be boiled within an inch of its life. I'm amazed it managed to stay so green and yet be so wet. The vitamins will have been boiled away completely. Such a shame.
oh lovely!!...dishwater soup...and to prove it they left the dishcloth on the plate with the broccoli....
ReplyDeleteMushroom soup (hope they didn't use the poisonous kind) followed by some kind of pie? with broccoli.
ReplyDeleteI think they boil the veg so much that they can use the water as soup for the next meal.
Cream of celery. Yuck
ReplyDeleteCauliflower soup and lasagne with broccoli????
ReplyDeleteDo I detect little bits of chicken in that soup - if I may call it that? And is the squidgy thing that looks like a used dish-cloth possibly lasagne? Not sure if it's meat or veggie. As for the greens - alas poor broccoli - how sad.
ReplyDeleteI'm guessing that the lumpy bits on the spoon are celery? I'm afraid the rest of it just looks like bile! Presentation on the main course does look a lot better at least there are different colours, not all orange / yellow for a change. No good if all boiled to death tho and not sure what the foldy up looking thing is - lasagne possibly?
ReplyDeleteLinda Tenerife x
Has somebody sneaked their broccoli onto your plate?
ReplyDeleteThe soup look like the liquid you get when a car head gasket goes.
On paper this could have been a great meal. If the hospital's chefs had been allowed to make their own mushroom soup with fresh local mushrooms and a vegetable lasagne with local veg, cheese and milk then you'd have a great meal. Steamed and firm broccoli would be easy to prepare. Instead, they're forced by the system to reheat rubbish made in a factory and then to serve it from a trolley on the ward. There's got to be a better way.
ReplyDeleteWhite! No, cream! No, grey! No, back to white. With bits. could it be.... canned asparagus? Mmmm. My favourite.
ReplyDeletethe broccoli is so green despite six weeks on the boil because the 'chef' added bicarb to the water. A very old trick from the times when every good housefrau boiled cabbage, cauli and broccoli for at least a good eight hours before serving.
ReplyDeletePlus I am voting chicken (ish) for the soup.
TM, I really don't know how you still have your sense of humour. How long have you been an inmate of this institution?
ReplyDeleteAre you actually getting any better or not? Is there a light at the end of the tunnel for you?
We had chicken with a reggae reggae cooking sauce tonight with rice! It was lovely! Really tasty! Had you been closer I would have sent you some. Not true home cooking but there was a need for an almost instant dinner tonight.
if the soup was celery, it was the best thing for it. celery is a hazarous waste!
ReplyDeleteI've made great progress this week. I've been in and out of hospital since February - 22 weeks actually in a hospital bed. I feel we might be making progress but the prognosis is between one and two years before I'm back to health. It's a long haul but nothing compared to what the young soldiers from Afghanistan go through. They put me to shame. I saw the tv documentary last night about the guy who lost two legs and an arm and was walking on prosthetic limbs in ten weeks. I haven't walked since February.I feel ashamed. I guess it shows youth, a good diet and the heart of a lion can make you better.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said...
ReplyDeleteif the soup was celery, it was the best thing for it. celery is a hazarous waste!
Cream of toadstool!
Is it mushroom soup? My mate had it for lunch at school today... He ended up sharing 8 baby potatoes together....
ReplyDeleteAnd what is the lump of glue/paste next to those broccoli? I guess this is how you reused things in your bedpan, trying to be green...
Again, wish you out of hell soon^_^
Oo, something green! How exciting!
ReplyDeleteCould your wife perhaps smuggle in some curry paste, taco seasoning or Jamaican jerk powder? Hot sauce packets? Some dried parmesan cheese from the green can? Maybe you could fix (har!) your meals when they arrive...
Some things are beyond fixing. How do you retexture food?
ReplyDeleteTM - I've been thinking about your broccoli and the length of time it must have been cooking - when do you think they start boiling the brussel sprouts for Christmas dins?
ReplyDeleteReferring to one of your earlier posts the DWP say you'll be out by. was it 9th?, November - so at least you won't have to worry about eating the Christmas sprouts.
wishing you better
Susan
Radio Two's Sarah Kennedy always advises putting the Christmas sprouts on in April and keeping them topped up. Same goes for veg here, I think.
ReplyDeletethe soup looks exactly like pus drained from a rotting cavity. As for the main course - do you think they had a special offer on broccoli? Must have added green food dye. Melt in the mouth broccoli, yum, yum
ReplyDeleteMy diseased femur had five litres of puss drained from it. I always wondered what happened to it.
ReplyDeleteIs that puss as in 'feline'? If so, did he meow a lot as he was extracted?
ReplyDeleteHello TM, here I am, trying my luck at the dinner bingo. I think it might have been some mushroom soup made with artificially flavoured soup powder? I detect lumps in it. For the other dish I wager on a vegetable strudel, but it looks wet. I reckon it is because you just cannot reheat a strudel properly in a vapour compartment nor in a microwave, it looses its crunchyness. And the broccoli look nice, but you say they were overcooked, too ... more's the pity! It is truly a shame, seeing food composed out of seemingly perfectly good ingredients going to waste only because it is prepared in such a ghoulish way ... Would you have the option to choose things like bread and butter or cream cheese, cucumber slices, tomato wedges, a hard boiled egg for a meal, maybe with some biscuits and cup of tea? Best wishes!! Barbara
ReplyDeleteYou try typing in traction, smart arse! Good spot though :-)
ReplyDeleteThe soup looks like Campbells cream of snot.
ReplyDeletePuss lady here. I admit it, that was a bit of a cheap laugh over one spelling mistake, but I just had visions of my cat 'Spud' (no, seriously - that is his name!), being vacuumed from your femur. Thanks for calling me a smart arse by the way, I am seriously proud of that! Your blog is truly the funniest thing I have read in ages and I heartily enjoy reading each episode of 'Traction Man's NHS culinary 'cat'astrophes'. Keep smiling! :-)
ReplyDeleteEeew! I was just going to suggest that tonight's 'amuse-bouche' was Pus soup, but then I read about you having to have gallons of the same siphoned from your leg; I thought it better not to labour a point so my best guess about what you got given in that placcy bowl is "conjunctivitis crust floated lovingly in a symphony of watery phlegm".
ReplyDeleteI am not as cruel as I sound - believe me, I have been where you are for months and it was weeks before I got a kiddy-beaker for my liquids - I bear the scars of a burned collar-bone to this day! I have dropped more hospital slop from a plastic SPORK into an already-grubby hospital blanket than I care to remember so trust me, my thoughts are truly with you. When's your next enema due?
Hospital food is served with an enema in the same way that fancy restaurants place finger bowls on the table when serving seafood.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteThe soup looks like mushroom soup, probably one of these large catering packs of soups full of artificial enhancers, colourings etc.
ReplyDeleteThe other meal has frozen brocolli, you can always tell it is frozen as it is tooooo green, colour enhancers again.
As for the congieled stuff next to the brocolli, Carbonara sauce ( packet stuff again, e numbers and all that )and some sinister bits thrown in.
I am no expert on foodie stuff, but I know what is healthy and what is not. If the food don`t kill you then your gut`s will my friend.
Ness,,xx
I suppose you still have to choose what you would like ?? I can imagine it - Hmmm mushroom soup followed by Lasagne with steamed broccoli will do me today - lovely
ReplyDeleteHow disappointing It's like hoping for a new bike for Christmas and getting a pair of second hand skates.
Ha-hah! Traction Man @ 23.24hrs! You should know better than to couple the concept of fingers and bowls in the same sentence as enemas! A man in your position? Dost thou not fear thy reference may hasten the horrid onslaught of a grey suppository bullet due to your roughage-free diet??? Prone and liable to constipation and dependent on the good Angels of the Ward to bring a bedpan before all your tiny bed-ridden world turns an involuntary brown? Anyway, 'tis too late now and you have mentioned both in one post.. I shall think of you as only one who has "been there" can and I pray that should you press that red button that the Angels come a running....
ReplyDeleteif i were you , i would ask wife to bring some power bars and trail mix. i am amazed you are still strong enough to blog with the fare you are getting there
ReplyDeleterhonda.usa
'E's a ruddy star, 'e is, a ruddy STAR, that Traction Man. Joviality in the face of all that hideous grub and prolonged imprisonment takes a special kind of nature. Most impressed I am.
ReplyDeleteIt's great that they're making an effort - or at least someone is. Let's hope they're on every day until November with no days off.
ReplyDeleteA thought - which I don't suppose you can comment on if you're in your room keeping your osteomyelitis to yourself - but I wonder if the other patients are getting the same effort made on their plates. Perhaps one of the staff can dish the dirt .. I'm hoping it's a yes but my cynicism is whacked up to 10 at the moment.
Shame about the broccoli. Someone's taken a perfectly good vegetable and destroyed it.
well someone has to say it ...
ReplyDeleteThe soap, err soup, is possibly chicken and snot, but it's the foreskin on a plate with broccoli that bothers me the most.
Traction Man, pray that the caterer never, ever discovers okra. Now in gumbos (or other tomatoe based stews) or fried or pickled it is palatable. But okra has a rather unique charateristic when prepared any other way. It slimes. I kid you not. Think snail trails, head cold mucus, great big honking snot balls. And it is very cheap to grow and it is very prolific. In fact it is no mere coincidence that it resembles those pods in Invasion of The Body Snatchers.
ReplyDeleteSo beam a grateful smile at your server when you see some limp, pallid broccolli on your plate. Cause next time it might be boiled okra.
Paula
My God, I am getting really angry. How is anyone supposed to get well on this inedible soup from a prison in the dark ages! And the lasagne needs a flame-thrower treatment.
ReplyDeleteOhhh dear!! You can never know what this food it's made of! It's almost imposible, not even tasting it lol! It's a fun bingo game tho! = )
ReplyDelete