Earlier this month, Debbie, our resident ‘Ostomate chef’, shared with us a little about her struggles and how she’s coped with eating following an ileostomy earlier this year, and an extremely nutritious ‘Super Green Soup’ recipe. This week she’s back to talk about how she reintroduced fruit into her diet, and shares with us two rather tasty smoothie recipes.
Enjoy…
Reintroducing fruit:
Eating fresh fruit has always been part of my diet, so it was something that I was very keen to reintroduce once I had the ileostomy. I was able to eat bananas from pretty much the third day, and have found them very helpful when needing to thicken my stoma output, and as a mid-morning snack in the early days when I was unable to eat much at meal times. As I knew that I could eat them with no ill effects, I used them as the base for the first smoothie I made, adding in mango as a new ingredient, mainly because they were on a deal in a local supermarket at the time! I use my Magimix to blend this smoothie as mango is quite fibrous, but a good blender will suffice. I’ve added other fruits too, prior to trying a small amount of the raw fruit. Remember the basic rule, small portions to begin with and chew well.
The Blueberry or Raspberry smoothie really came about as I was missing my weekly bowl of blueberries, Greek yoghurt and homemade cruesli for breakfast. Both fruits are packed with antioxidants, and of course cranberry juice is well known for its great infection fighting properties, and all contain essential vitamins. Whilst recovering from surgery, the importance of eating protein as contained in milk and yoghurt was impressed upon me, and of course they are packed with calcium. Since starting chemotherapy, I have found that a smoothie is a quick and easy way to get food inside me, even when I might not have much appetite. I always strain the raspberry one due to the high pip content. I use honey to sweeten the smoothies if necessary as it is a natural sugar with antiseptic and antibacterial properties.
The Mango and Banana smoothie makes enough for two smoothies, the Blueberry or Raspberry one for 4 to 6, but it’s easy to halve the quantities. I keep one in the fridge for the next day. You may find the contents separate out but a quick stir sorts this, add more milk or juice as they can thicken up too.
Blueberry and Cranberry Smoothie
Serves 4-6, halve quantities if necessary
Ingredients
200ml cranberry juice
100ml milk
200ml natural or Greek yoghurt
1 tbsp sugar (to taste), or honey
175g frozen blueberries, defrosted. You can substitute these for other berries, such as raspberries. Strain to remove the pips if you use raspberries.
Method
Put all the ingredients in a blender and pulse until smooth
Mango and Banana Smoothie
Ingredients
1 large mango, skinned, stoned and roughly chopped
2 large bananas, skinned and roughly chopped
Orange juice or cranberry juice to thin consistency, as you prefer
Honey to sweeten to taste
Method
Put the mango and banana in the blender and pulse until smooth. Then add juice and honey to achieve your preferred consistency and sweetness.
Debbie’s recently been working with The Oasis, a local Macmillan service in Jersey, to put together a series of recipe cards for people affected by cancer, and perhaps struggling to eat or drink following treatment. Find out more about The Oasis here on the Macmillan website.
Thoughts on food and cancer? Perhaps a recipe you wish to share? Go ahead and do so using the comments section below. You might also like to join our Ileostomy, colostomy and stoma support group to talk to other Ostomates.
