Ideas for 'bland' Food

Jojo_the_Tightfisted

I'm taking low dose chemo for autoimmune disease and, as I'm so lucky in these things, I get the side effects

My sense of taste is all over the place, I can't deal with salty, spicy, acidic or strongly/distinctly flavoured foods (couldn't even put a piece of green pepper in my mouth a coupe of days ago and it made the entire meal taste of it) and I've either got a gum infection or ulcers around my back tooth (back at the hospital for a checkup next week, so I'll check with them)


I've just pushed away my dinner because there were spices added to the chicken and rice, so I've only had a quarter of an avocado and a couple of spoonfuls of frozen peas. A slice of toast this morning made my tongue feel like it had been burned.


The poor bloke is an erratic cook, but is determined that he should do it (and, tbh, after a full day at work, I can't be faffed with even thinking about food, much less cooking it anyway).


In addition to this, I can't have milky things due to intolerance (they make me feel very, very sick/upset my tummy very painfully) and the consultant thinks that it's likely that dairy is an issue for me in any case.


I know quite a few people here will have experienced taking medications that affect their sense of taste, albeit probably in much higher doses. In my case, I'm being told that I can't possibly be having side effects at such a low dose and they've already whacked up my folic acid to every day except injection day each week - but I'm not somebody who pushes away food under any normal circumstance.



What I'm asking for are suggestions of things that are less likely to hurt to eat, less likely to taste absolutely foul and are relatively cheap and easy for a cook of variable expertise.

Going by my internal padding , I've got a fair while before it starts being a medical, rather than a comfort issue - but I'm hungry and I'm on this medication for the foreseeable future, so it's not going to get better by itself.

Please Help!

GlasweJen

What do you like just now? I’m on one medication and all I can tolerate is avocado or boiled eggs until well into the afternoon on it. I don’t even like eggs normally

elona

Porridge made with water? Scrambled eggs or an omelette?
Soup that is not cream with a little soft bread dipped in it.

Mashed potato with a little gravy maybe? Bananas frozen and blitzed into ice cream?

Islandmaid

I would second Elona’s suggestions and add Risotto made with chicken stock.

Poached chicken is another one, served with mash, potato or swede, would those boil in the bag fish in sauce portions be a possibility?

luxor4t

I lived on tea and plain biscuits until I got used to the mtx tablets I have to take. I just got the queasiness, I avoided the mouth ulcers.

Later, sandwiches of white bread with sliced ham or plain cooked chicken, or tinned spring vegetable soup.

I have been taking the tablets for 8 years now, it does get easier, eventually. Fingers crossed for you.

greenbee

Rice pudding. Rice cakes. Porridge made with rice milk.

msb5262

Jacket potatoes? Plain boiled rice or pasta? Pur!e of cooked apple maybe? Ice cream, sorbet, frozen yogurt? Hope your poor mouth settles down soon.

JIL

Would it help to eat what you can manage and supplement your food with something easy to get down?

I had chemotherapy and radiotherapy on my mouth and my taste buds went completely. Sometimes I felt I was trying to eat lard.
I drank a lot of complan, the savoury soups, chicken and vegetable, made with boiling water and cooled with cream. They really helped. Because they had all the required nutrition in them I felt I had a real boost when I ate them.

There was a cookbook I bought called the easy to swallow cook book, it was made up of bland food. Not sure I still have it but will have a look.

Best of luck.

lessonlearned

Could you try making milk puddings with lacto free milk, rice puddings, egg custards etc. Something that will slip down and not aggravate your mouth ulcers. I had to switch to lactose free milk and cheddar cheese and they are both fine for cooking.

Things like white fish, poached chicken, plain vegetable soups although some green vegetables can have a very strong or bitter taste.

Also agree maybe try some of the meal supplements such as complan or fortified yogurts (Fortisip) to ensure you are getting enough calories.

Spendless

I know when I had food poisoning years ago and when well enough to eat, only craved bland stuff, the thing I wanted most was Cottage pie, made without all the flavourings added to the mince and just mashed potatoes with no cheese on top.

Other than that I'd also suggest soup. I find leek and potato can be very bland if no flavourings are added as a base.

moneyistooshorttomention

Milk is bland enough. As you say that you can't have milk anyway - then try and experiment your way through the different plant milks out there.

I'd suggest starting with rice milk. Oat milk is another possibility. There's also hemp milk and soya milk. You are likely to differ in what you think of them all.

It will also differ according to brand. For instance I like rice milk best - but it has to be the Rice Dream brand. Oat milk has to be the Oatly brand for me. I guess the brand thing is the equivalent of the difference between decent orange juice and "Value" orange juice (I like the first and would only drink the second if desperate).

Oatly brand has other things they do as well - eg Oatly Creamy Oat. That is a single cream equivalent I sometimes buy for pudding type things.

EDIT; Re the idea of making "Nice Cream" (ie banana icecream) - some experimenting later = I've found one has to take the skin off bananas before freezing them and it seems to work out best to cut a banana into 4 (rather than into slices or leaving it whole) before putting it in a ziplock bag in the freezer. Personally - my blender is a Vitamix and hence blitzes everything (but is very noisy) - and so I often tend to just take out 4 quarters of a banana from the freezer and pour some oat cream over it and it doesnt take long before it softens enough to eat - rather than blitzing it into icecream texture. One could probably speed up the softening process too by putting those banana pieces onto metal (trans = in a saucepan), as that causes things to defrost noticeably quicker. Don't ask me the science of why that is so - I just know it works.