Glop for dinner, doctor’s orders

With another St. Patrick’s Day under our collective belts, it is time now to turn our attention away from the corned beef and cabbage to other visions of provender that have been dancing in our minds.

I refer specifically to the hundreds of varieties that we enjoy when dining out.

You will note that I make a distinction between eating at home and dining out. We are talking here about eating out. In other words not your mother’s famous pot roast.

The nature of my job over the last 75 years has caused me to probably eat more of my evening meals out than at home.

If there was an organization in Lake County that did not hold regular dinner meetings I haven’t heard about it yet. So I consumed a lot of food that was not home cooked. That does not mean it was not good but it did not come from the kitchen at home.

If I were to list here all the kitchens that have provided my dinners over that time frame the list would fill the rest of these pages and run over into the Classified section.

Overall the quality of the food I ate away from home has been excellent.

There has been one glaring exception to this generalization that I must explain to you carefully lest you get the wrong impression.

The exception is pureed food and nectar thickening liquids. This kind of food cannot be avoided if your doctor prescribes it for you. You have no control over what you eat when you are on this diet — If you are confined to a facility which feeds you three meals a day (for example the assisted living facility where I live) and cannot prepare your own meals. You eat what they put before you.

(If you ever lived in a facility for “seasoned” citizens as I do or if you ever lived in an Army barracks as I did for two years you will be aware of what I am about to say — if your experience involves good food be grateful you are one of the fortunate ones. But I digress.)

What they put before you may be good bad or terrible.

Fine. You can always move. But this may not be an option and if your doctor prescribes a specific regimen that is what you will eat. You cannot go to the chef and tell him you would like something different. At least I am not aware of it.

You may not like it in the least, but I guarantee you it is healthy. So if it is something you hate, well that’s how it goes.

Let’s confine this discussion to food that goes through the puree machine. A normal strict diet can be very appetizing but if it is pureed it looks like baby food. It all looks like glop. It comes in different colors, but it is still glop.

You can bring to dinner all the condiments you want, for example hot sauce, but I don’t care if you are eating at the Four Seasons or the Ritz, glop is glop.

The best team of chefs in Greater Cleveland could not make it palatable.

If you are ever in a situation as I am and have pureed food prescribed by your doctor, don’t complain to the chef complain to the doctor. That discussion is between you and him or her. And I say good luck with that.

I can tell you from personal experience that the two chefs where I live put their hearts and souls into providing firstclass meals for all of those who live here.

But when they are preparing a meal that a doctor says must be pureed, that is a contradiction of terms. Pureed food cannot in any way shape or form be an example of fine dining. It is no such thing. Most doctors are not wishywashy or namby-pamby about decisions they have made, and they make their decisions based on a lot of experience in their profession.

So if they say puree it, that is what you will get. Glop. Don’t like it? That’s tough. The bottom line is — and there is nothing we can do about bottom lines — there is nothing we can do to change it.

Don’t forget, if you have a sweet tooth as I do you can still order dessert.

Welcome to my world of a small piece of blueberry pie with no crust and a scoop of vanilla ice cream all pureed into one bowl of glop.

See if you like that. If you do I’ll gladly share mine with you.