As the founder & CEO of Real Food Blends, many people are surprised to learn that I still make blends for my son AJ. I’ve been blending for him for three years now, it’s almost second nature! I find making his food to be healing in many ways – he gets a lot of what the rest of the family eats as he should since he’s part of the family!
All of us at Real Food Blends believe that fresh food is best and encourage anyone with a feeding tube or caring for someone with a feeding tube to discuss a homemade blenderized diet with their medical team. But we also know that the time, effort and work involved in making a blended diet is .. a lot. Even now, after 3 years and being in a good routine with AJ’s blends, it’s still work. I’m thankful to have Real Food Blends to rely on when I don’t feel like cooking that day, and that I no longer have to stress when the freezer stash is getting low, knowing that I need to do another marathon shopping, prepping, cooking & blending session. Like this:
That was a few days worth of meals and relatively easy blends. Plus, it helps to have two sinks and two Vitamix containers!
As summer starts and our meals are once again readily available, we hope that our blending families can relax a bit, maybe enjoy vacation a little more without coolers of dry ice & carrying their blender around! With our meals in your pantry you or your loved one can still have a 100% real food meal, and a little time out of the kitchen.
Blend on!
6 Comments
Haha. I have been blending for my daughter for over 13 years now and this video cracked me up. I’ve done the gamut of blending anywhere from 2 weeks at a time to 1 day at at time, which I have settled into for a while now. For the last few years her diet has necessitated 1300mls of food per day. In the early days when she was so fragile and her needs very time consuming, my mom would lovingly blend gallons of foods at a time and bring them to us. Both my mother and mother in law made formula for their babies (and one as a nurse) in the day when formula wasn’t even a product option. Blending made sense to them, too, and we carefully crafted a variety of recipes to make sure all the nutritional bases were covered.
It has been amazing to see the expansion of knowledge and practice of homemade blenderized diets over the last decade +. We have put blenderized food through all kinds of feeding tubes including a tiny 7 french NG tube. (That was admittedly a challenge.) When I started it was a given that was how I would feed my girlie and I met A LOT of professional resistance. Not so much anymore, thankfully.
I’m so happy that so many families are able to reap the benefits of real nutrition via their tubes and that you are contributing toward that mission. Awesome!
Thank you for sharing your story!! That’s awesome you thought to do it 13 years ago and had your mother & mother-in-law helping!!