When I was recovering from a tonsillectomy and couldn’t eat much, I would milkshakes with bananas and peanut butter, maybe a slug of honey, as well as vanilla icecream. They were filling, and thanks to the bananas and peanut butter, not completely un-nutritious.
Also, how about snacking on nuts? Small amounts give you a lot of protein and good fats.
Nursery food. Whatever your Mum or Nana used to feed you when you were little. For me that’s scrambled eggs on toast – bummer that you can’t have eggs – heinz tomato soup with white bread broken up into it and tinned rice pudding.
When I was on chemo the only food I ever had that I didn’t have to actively force down my throat was rice pudding Everything else tasted like either sawdust or vinegar.
I don’t think that anybody’s suggesting that ivylass make these a permanent part of her diet, but when somebody’s on a relatively short-term course of medical treatment that leaves them without appetite, the most important thing is to get calories into his/her system, by whatever means necessary. I used to work at a camp for kids with cancer, and during orientation the first summer I was there, the head counselor repeated the Bill Cosby routine about the time his wife left him to feed the kids breakfast, and all they wanted was chocolate cake. He tried pushing them towards regular food, and they started to tantrum, so he began to think about what goes into chocolate cake - eggs! Eggs are good for you! And milk! Flour! Flour’s not bad! The counselor’s point was that sometimes, it’s important to make sure the kid is getting enough food that they’re not wasting away, no matter what form it comes in. They’d serve a kid french fries three times a day if that was all the camper would eat, and this was fully supported by the pediatric oncologists on staff.
I’ve made peanut butter banana smoothies, and they’re good. At this time, I am trying to eat healthy, but I’m not going to sweat the calories too much (well, maybe a little.) We’re going out to lunch today and I had no idea how bad a Chicken Caesar Salad is for you! Loaded with fat and sodium, you’d think a salad would be good for you.
I do feel better today…the achiness is gone, so I can hopefully get through the weekend eating halfway normally. Milkshakes are definitely on the menu!
My brother did smoke pot while going through chemo–it was the only thing that brought his appetite back.
And yeah, I’ve been eating Casear salads even though I’m trying to eat more healthfully–they aren’t the leanest option out there! But at least it’s fiber. 
Do you like nut butters? Like almond butter? Peanutbutter is good but only if it’s genuine stuff, not with sugar and other veg oils added.
Trader Joe’s has a fabulous cashew-macadamia butter with no junk added. Last weekend I made a sandwich with that and some fig jam on whole wheat bread - it was fabulous. And I’m sure it was about half a billion calories.
Homemade milkshakes taste so much better than the tinned “nutrient” shakes, and you know what? Most of the nutrients are comparable to milk, anyway!
WhyBaby’s favorite “milkshake” (we’re trying to pack some pounds onto her) is whole milk with a couple of scoops of whole milk vanilla yogurt and a good squeeze of chocolate syrup (I use the recipe on the back of the cocoa powder, but the premixed stuff isn’t bad, either). She likes to shakeshakeshake, but if you’re tired you could stir or mix it with a hand blender instead.
You could make up a larger batch than you can drink at once and keep it in the fridge. Stir before pouring some off.
If you need more calories/nutrition, try adding a scoop or two of baby formula powder to each glass. The stuff made for preemies has a few extra calories per ounce. It’s cheaper than health food store powders, and doesn’t taste like sawdust.
And consider the Marinol. It’s not as good as marijuana, but it’s not, y’know, illegal. It won’t turn you into a degenerate, just a better eater.
How are you with milkshakes? If you could fit one in every couple days…even just a little one…that might help.
My husband bought one of those Magic Bullets (as seen on TV) and it makes a little shake. Just enough and not too much.
My secret for feeding a sick husband or children is to make smoothies with silken tofu. I buy the little shelf-stable blocks that have about a three-month expiration date, so I can take them out and use them only when needed.
Recipe:
1 half-block silken tofu
1 banana
1 to 2 cups frozen fruit *
Enough fruit juice to thin to blending consistency
1 tablespoon sugar or other sweetener
Blend on high in blender; serve immediately.
Try one of those big Jewish Kosher Pickles. I found when I feel like food get bland, eating a couple of those resets my taste buds
Maybe try smoothies? Whole milk yogurt, milk, a banana, and a little peanut butter packs a lot of calories and protein. And you can vary the ingredients so you don’t get tired of the taste.
Hang in there!
Eating is a combination of sensations. It’s not all taste. How about a bowl of Lobster Bisque with some toasted olive bread. You can get it in the frozen food section.
Manhattan clam chowder (I have a good recipe if it sounds good)
CHEESY POTATO CASSEROLE - again, lots of textures and flavors.
Make yourself a pitcher of ice tea with mint (you can buy real mint at the store)
Hang in there. If there’s such a thing as good vibes consider yourself vibed.
An intimate friend?
::Gets smacked and slinks away::
Well first, you need to know, Ivylass, that I have some pounds I would gladly send your way. If only we could email them!
Some of my faves…
pasta…pile on the cheesy alfredo sauce
manicotti
baked potato…go nuts with the bacon, cheese, sour cream, butter etc.
split pea soup with bacon
grilled cheese sandwiches (with ketchup—you have ketchup on a cheeseburger, right?)
bread slathered with nutella
apples slathered with nutella
nutella slathered with nutella
fried chicken with corn on the cob
fried chicken with chile de arbol
fried chicken slathered with nutella? maybe…
Now I’m all hungry 
ETA: and of course, pizza. Maybe slathered with nutella.
My appetite was crap a few years, and the taste of foods terrible to just blah. It was probably being sick and the medicines both doing this. I could eat cheeses, bread, chicken soup, ham, and drink milk or cranberry juice. None of them were always edible either. Most meat made me sick the first bite. Anything you find you can eat, put on a list. Anything that you can’t eat put on a list. Try to think of what makes something not edible and removing that component may put it on the other list. Anise candies can help with a queasy stomach, but it really doesn’t go well with most food.
The problem often isn’t the foods have little flavor. It’s often the flavors are wrong and you can’t eat it.
It’s funny, when you feel miserable, you just don’t want to do anything. I feel much better today, and I hope I can get some errands done. It’s just hard to eat when the thought of any meal makes you go “meh.”
Still, must fuel the engine, must eat, so eat I will. I do love nut butters, so I’ll see if there’s anything besides peanut available. Thanks so much for all your support, guys!
I have posted it before but am too lazy to search =)
Rice congee is an old fashioned comfort food - chinese=) i picked up the habit from my grandmother who had chinese roomies in college when she was young.
Take a whole chicken, a large pot, a knob of ginger the size of a golf ball, one star of anise, a stick of cinnamon, 5 or 6 sezchuan peppercorns and enough water to cover the disjointed chicken. Throw them all into the pot, and turn the pot to boil. When it reaches the boil torn it off, leave the lid on and let it sit for 1 hour. At the end, remove the chicken from the broth and set in the fridge to chill out enough to be able to shred the meat off the bones.
Take the broth, add 2/3 the amount of rice that it would normally make as solid nonliquid rice - you are going to simmer the rice in the broth until it basically dissolves along with a fresh knob of ginger, a whole bulb of garlic cloves, a large onion [softball sized] 2 or 3 carrots cut into smallish bits and the shredded chicken. Simmer on low for a long time. Porrige is essentially the goal. This stuff freezes beautifully. The ginger is great for upset stomaches, and the garlic is good for the blood, and theoretically it is to be made with those black chickens for maximum effect=) very nutritions, and easy going down. It can be made towards the bland end or the spicy end of the spectrun as your choice.
Jello. Cold and sweet. Not a lot of protein, fibre or anything else, but it counts as a liquid and can help keep you hydrated=) and makes the inside of your mouth feel better=)
That sounds really good, aruvqan. I also picked up some sunflower butter today, and I’m curious enough to want to eat some toast with it.
It’s weird, I felt pretty good this morning, made plans to run errands and hit the gym, and right around the time I was hopping in the shower it’s like all the energy just drained away. I did eat breakfast this morning, so that wasn’t it. I barely made it through some of my errands and then came home and crashed.
Well, I’m not going to sweat it. This isn’t a normal time for me, so no reason to act and do normal. I’ll do what I can and what I can’t, I can’t.