Anna N

So here is Real Food! Vietnamese fresh spring rolls with dipping sauce. Vietnamese beef noodle soup well dressed! And then should I get a little peckish later: So all of you who thought you might need to send me CARE packages —Stand down. We are good. @Kerry Beal saved another life.

This hospital has a virtual food circus and the food there is extremely good. It’s not cheap. The problem is that I can’t leave my room and the only way I can get food like that is if someone visits and I ask them to go down there. Which I have done on other occasions. I quite enjoyed Timmys Thai soup on my last unfortunate encounter with this institution. There is even a sushi bar down there much better than you find in supermarkets but not a real sushi bar of course.

I have the Dick Tracy watch! Watch your PM for incoming.

Not me. That’s the way it arrived. I don’t think it’s an actual bite. Perhaps the angle or the lighting? Anyway it was quite a horrible orange and I only did take two bites of it before saying bye-bye.

Oh my God I missed that best before date! But don’t they say Twinkies never die? Maybe the bread uses the same formula.

But you gotta look at the other side of it. Only the food is an issue and that will be remedied in due time by my friends and family. Other than that I am getting expert medical treatment, caring and considerate nursing staff, friendly and obliging support staff and I would like to be better before I go home ! Otherwise I would be out of here AMA. And I’ve done it before.

I have some terrible news for you. I knocked my pepper collection on the floor and the cleaner cleaned it up!

Once again it looks and smells as if no broccoli was harmed in the making of this broccoli soup! Look me hearties – – fresh fruit. What do you think? Should I eat this or should I hold out for Vietnamese beef noodle soup that is on its way?

Minmal. There is something called, surely with an ironic sense of humour, Room Service. I did try it once when I was here. The food was not one jot better than what they bring up from their assembly line, the choices were very limited and it cost me every time I ordered it. They do not charge you for the food, they charge you for the phone call. Go figure!

The cavalry is coming! The cavalry is coming! @Kerry Beal to the rescue.

I couldn’t quite believe my eyes when I opened this! I thought there were bits of mould in it. I don’t eat breakfast cereal. Never have. These things are a mystery to me so I had to read menu to find out what it was that I was not about to eat. And there it is — Fibre 1 — epic failure on the part of the marketing team. The cheese, bland and hardly worthy of the name, was at least a hint of protein on my breakfast tray. I ate the cheese. The muffin was just tolerable but I ate it and that was breakfast. Oh there was an apple juice. I snatched that for my daughter who enjoys a little taste of apple juice without having to buy a whole lot of it. She will drink it next time she visits. And there is that egregious water again!

Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again... Actually I didn’t. I dreamed that I ate two sheets, a blanket and half a pillow so breakfast had better be edible this morning.

How awful would that be? They would’ve shipped me down to Sudbury. The link is broken so here is the first verse from Stomping Tom’s “Sudbury Saturday Night: Da girls are out to Bingo and the boys are gettin' stinko, And we think no more of Inco on a Sudbury Saturday night. The glasses dey will tinkle when our eyes begin to twinkle, And we'll think no more of Inco on a Sudbury Saturday night.

Damn we should have smellovision! Then you could’ve told us how you really felt.

Thank you for your kind wishes. Aside from the food, I have been given exemplary care by all of the doctors nurses and support staff.

Thank you for your good wishes. I gave up TV some months ago and I’m not paying the prices they want for me to watch TV here! I am grateful for no roomies. Almost all rooms in this hospital are private rooms. Ontario was badly unprepared when the SARS epidemic hit. This hospital design is a direct result of the deficiencies found then. All rooms can be made isolation units to some extent and there are rooms like mine which is sort of isolation and can be made even more isolation. Then there are super isolation suites I believe. They have done away with wards which existed in the old hospital. There are some rooms which have adjoining bathroms or something but for the most part they are fully private and fully self-contained. The bathroom has toilet and shower and sink.

What wouldn’t I give for a bowl of red Jell-O? They can do so little to make it other than what it is.

Thanks for your good wishes! There are people on the floor ordering in pizza but I’m in isolation and the pizza delivery people don’t seem to think they want to mask and gown and glove just to deliver me a pizza! Wusses.

I feel about kale and about garbanzo beans exactly the same way you feel about green peppers. And to put them both in the same dish!

Now for dinner: The smell was just awful. Had to look up kalebazo mix. Click I did stick a fork into the lasagna and learned they had not yet solved the problem of the cold entrée. Lasagna has to be really good to appeal to me. This did not even come close. As for the vegetables I could not get past the smell. If you’ve ever been in an apartment block where low income people dwell you would recognize this smell. It is the smell of poverty. Lingering cooking odours that never leave the hallways. Brassicas cooked until they are unrecognizable. I saved the pepper and there will be no rescue tonight. My weight-loss plan has finally started in earnest. I did save the salmon sandwich as emergency rations. But if SW stands for southwestern I would love to know which country they were referring to. Nothing recognizable as Tex-Mex. WW stands for whole-wheat. That is the only bread this hospital serves and I have never bought into the theory that it is very much more nutritious them plain white bread. At least they didn’t waste margarine on it. It would have to be a much bigger emergency to persuade me to eat anymore than two bites of the bread. If you think I am exaggerating and I am to some very limited extent for the sake of houmour, The last time I was in this hospital the man in the room next to mine would receive his meal and dump the whole thing into the garbage can. Cutlery and everything. And I eavesdropped around enough to know that I was not by any means alone in my opinion of the food. One or two people praised it to high heaven and you could only wonder what the hell they ate at home. I was interviewed at that time by one of the culinary interns. Apparently none of my suggestions were incorporated despite her a parent enthusiasm for my ideas. I understand they do not have an unlimited budget. I understand feeding seven floors of people is challenging. I just don’t believe that you can’t produce interesting, nutritious, tasty and attractive meals. This is a brand new hospital and as far as we are told nothing was spared to make it the most technologically advanced Hospital in the province. Perhaps some of that budget could’ve been allocated to the meal plans? Innovations in food preparation? But what do I know? For the cost of the tiny cartons of spring water on my tray could we not have a choice of saltine crackers?

The thing is I had already decided to attempt Intermittent fasting to take off some pounds. I just would’ve preferred to do it my way!

So brace yourself for lunch: kudos again to the dietary staff. They have finally figured out how to get the soup to the patient while it is still hot. The only problem is the lid is so difficult to remove that you are much more likely to end up with a lap full of soup than a belly full of it. I did manage to get the lid off and stare into the container. It appeared to be a layer of water overlying a layer of vegetables? Harvested by what? Certainly not a hard-working farmer. But I did recognize the smell from way back when and I’m pretty sure it’s Campbell’s. What the hell is SW Salmon? And have you ever tried saltines with no salt? Why do they think they called them saltines? They taste like not even fresh cardboard. Fresh honey dew perhaps. Ripe honeydew? No way. From this tray I snatched the pepper and I did eat the melon.

I’m sure it’s a budgetary choice I just think it’s a poor choice. Nope not for pill taking. Water is brought to every patient more than once a day. That is why stewed prunes were invented. Oh.Pardon me, stewed dried plums. You want me to do what in Styrofoam container? They are not that big. So far the pita has taken the prize for a bizarre idea. I did try it and it was so dry that I could not even swallow it. Maybe that’s what the water is for— to get down the Pita. You are all making me laugh so much I will be out of here in no time.

I am not a milk drinker. I might use milk in baking but that’s about it so I’m not very familiar with brands anymore. I don’t drink milk and I don’t drink juice. But I’m not faulting them for that. That’s just a personal choice.Canada’s new and touted food rules tells us that we should make water our drink of choice. Looks like some water company has jumped on that bandwagon and is now making a fortune selling ridiculous amounts of water to hospitals. We have access to ice water and if we don’t want ice there is a bathroom in every room.

I just think it’s ridiculous the cost of putting that on a hospital tray when they could spend it on fresh vegetables or fruit make our farmers is a decent living. Keep some of the freaking plastic out of the environment. Really that is the most egregious thing on the tray.