Nutrition | Poal: Say what you want.

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Nutrition

My sister and I aimed to provide 100% coverage caring for my mother in her home. We bought a Tovala oven and subscribed to their meal plan for Mom and it worked out very well for us and I recommend it for your oldsters who don't have energy to cook anymore. - Minimal preparation effort - Hot meals - Good menu - "Mom approved," quality of included produce items - You can order meals to be shipped weekly as four or more meals. - You can use the Tovala oven for other stuff. I recommend using it to toast sandwiches. - Poptarts are fucking transcendent when toasted in a Tovala oven. Same for angel food cake. - If you are not there with them they may need some help dealing with the packages which can be heavy for them.

Here's how the nutrition story goes down: Thanksgiving week my mom goes to her oncologist for a routine checkup - they had always been clean up until this point. Dr. informs her that she has stage IV metastatic lung cancer (s/vax/, s/covidawards/#Awarded). Up until this time she was frail and tired as you might expect being old with vaxcancer ravaging your lungs. So my sister and I decide that we're going to get very engaged in taking care of Mom.

We immediately take turns working from her home and feeding her. It is fucking exhausting because Mom is malnourished and eats like a horse. - Breakfast: HALF-A-DOZEN scambled eggs, fr nocap, toast, some fruit, refried beans, milk, and coffee. Eats everything. - 10 am snack: a ham sandwich, fruit, glass of milk. - Lunch: maybe another sandwich and would you cut me an orange? Milk. Or leftover supper. - Supper: cook some kind of traditional meat, veggie, starch thing. - Bedtime snack: maybe a cookie or some ice cream and another glass of milk. Do all this between meetings and work. exhausted.jpg Remember that she did this for you, so it's all good.

We do this program for a few weeks and she goes back to Dr. Badnews. He walks in the room, does a double-take, and says, "This is remarkable! You look great! I don't usually see improvement to this degree in your situation..."

Enter Tovala. Now our day looks like this: - Breakfast - still making a nice breakfast because front loading calories really helps her day. She tapers down to a couple eggs with toast, fruit, coffee, milk. - Snack: toast a sandwich in the Tovala. She's always delighted. - Lunch: She peels a Tovala meal open, squirts the sauce on the pork-chop, cook, plate, eat, and very happy with hot meat/veggie combo. - Dinner: She's not so hungry for dinner now that she's not malnourished. Whatever I cook is fine. Or she eats another Tovala and takes the pressure off of me. - Bedtime snack: Ice cream, tea biscuits, or a milkshake

Preparing regular meals made a tremendous difference which added months to her life, no doubt. She made it 9 months from the start of her 3-6 month prognosis - 50% better than best case.

Toasty sandwich pro tip: use bakery bread, put meat and cheese on the bread and toast, then put condiments, lettuce, tomato, etc. in the middle. This way it does not slide apart so much.

At the risk of sounding like a Tovala shill - that thing was a time-machine for us in this application. Other Tovala info if you try it: - It is an oven, not a microwave. no plastic. - It can be used for non-Tovala sourced food - They have capability to scan barcodes for many grocery store items and cook them - Totino's party pizzas (rectangles) do poorly in this oven. Don't do it. - Take out all the inside parts of the oven and wash in the dishwasher - Keep a few of the foil pans that ship with Tovala meals - they will be handy. But don't bother washing them - you will accumulate some quickly - The Reheat function is amazing for leftovers - The oven is programmable if you get the app and can cycle between bake, broil, and steam if you care to go to that level of detail - There are many Tovala recipes online if you want to cook your own food - The ovens are pretty cheap - the food was maybe $10 per meal though. Worth it when you are losing your mind trying to keep up.

Know this: old people are hungry, and they may not tell you for many reasons such as they don't want to be an inconvenience. You may not pick up on this unless you spend some time with them and observe. This was certainly my case. Nutrition is something you can influence and it has results you can see and your person can feel. When you take on caring for another person this should be solved as job one. Let me give you a solution I used, and then I'll tell you about the experience. My sister and I aimed to provide 100% coverage caring for my mother in her home. We bought a Tovala oven and subscribed to their meal plan for Mom and it worked out very well for us and I recommend it for your oldsters who don't have energy to cook anymore. - Minimal preparation effort - Hot meals - Good menu - "Mom approved," quality of included produce items - You can order meals to be shipped weekly as four or more meals. - You can use the Tovala oven for other stuff. I recommend using it to toast sandwiches. - Poptarts are fucking transcendent when toasted in a Tovala oven. Same for angel food cake. - If you are not there with them they may need some help dealing with the packages which can be heavy for them. Here's how the nutrition story goes down: Thanksgiving week my mom goes to her oncologist for a routine checkup - they had always been clean up until this point. Dr. informs her that she has stage IV metastatic lung cancer (s/vax/, s/covidawards/#Awarded). Up until this time she was frail and tired as you might expect being old with vaxcancer ravaging your lungs. So my sister and I decide that we're going to get very engaged in taking care of Mom. We immediately take turns working from her home and feeding her. It is fucking exhausting because Mom is malnourished and eats like a horse. - Breakfast: HALF-A-DOZEN scambled eggs, fr nocap, toast, some fruit, refried beans, milk, and coffee. Eats everything. - 10 am snack: a ham sandwich, fruit, glass of milk. - Lunch: maybe another sandwich and would you cut me an orange? Milk. Or leftover supper. - Supper: cook some kind of traditional meat, veggie, starch thing. - Bedtime snack: maybe a cookie or some ice cream and another glass of milk. Do all this between meetings and work. exhausted.jpg Remember that she did this for you, so it's all good. We do this program for a few weeks and she goes back to Dr. Badnews. He walks in the room, does a double-take, and says, "This is remarkable! You look great! I don't usually see improvement to this degree in your situation..." Enter Tovala. Now our day looks like this: - Breakfast - still making a nice breakfast because **front loading calories really helps her day**. She tapers down to a couple eggs with toast, fruit, coffee, milk. - Snack: toast a sandwich in the Tovala. She's always delighted. - Lunch: She peels a Tovala meal open, squirts the sauce on the pork-chop, cook, plate, eat, and very happy with hot meat/veggie combo. - Dinner: She's not so hungry for dinner now that she's not malnourished. Whatever I cook is fine. Or she eats another Tovala and takes the pressure off of me. - Bedtime snack: Ice cream, tea biscuits, or a milkshake Preparing regular meals made a tremendous difference which added months to her life, no doubt. She made it 9 months from the start of her 3-6 month prognosis - 50% better than best case. Toasty sandwich pro tip: use bakery bread, put meat and cheese on the bread and toast, then put condiments, lettuce, tomato, etc. in the middle. This way it does not slide apart so much. At the risk of sounding like a Tovala shill - that thing was a time-machine for us in this application. Other Tovala info if you try it: - It is an oven, not a microwave. no plastic. - It can be used for non-Tovala sourced food - They have capability to scan barcodes for many grocery store items and cook them - Totino's party pizzas (rectangles) do poorly in this oven. Don't do it. - Take out all the inside parts of the oven and wash in the dishwasher - Keep a few of the foil pans that ship with Tovala meals - they will be handy. But don't bother washing them - you will accumulate some quickly - The Reheat function is amazing for leftovers - The oven is programmable if you get the app and can cycle between bake, broil, and steam if you care to go to that level of detail - There are many Tovala recipes online if you want to cook your own food - The ovens are pretty cheap - the food was maybe $10 per meal though. Worth it when you are losing your mind trying to keep up.

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I was a bit shocked. Scamble three eggs, and then, "can I have some more eggs? maybe another three?" Then it just became, "will you cook me six eggs?" LOL. Sure, mom. Pretty sure that she was the reason for the apparent egg shortage.

I introduced her to refried beans and baked beans for breakfast also. She said that refried beans really gave her a full and satisfied feeling that she didn't get from other things.

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