Soup novice, unwell mother, leftover chicken - please help

[WinterWonderlandIsComing]

Hi. I'm a lurker and reg poster on other boards so I feel a bit rude crashing here

My Mum has dementia and an as yet undiagnosed gastric problem which is causing her to be unable to eat much solid food.

We had chicken for Christmas dinner and I still have a lot of it left, plus veg so I thought of making some soup. I know that the bones can be used to make a tasty stock but DH is arguing that they are very fine and may choke her. We do own a sieve

Could anyone please give me a tasty and basic recipe which is full of fat and goodness? Her weight-loss is shocking.

I know that if I bring it round she is more likely to eat it. Like when you get a toddler involved with cooking. I'm having to give my Dad my toddler-logic tips a lot these days

Chuck the bones, veg, gravy, stuffing etc & some water in a big pan - add onion, celery, carrot, dried split peas/lentils, small dried pasta (whichever you have) and boil for a good hour. Sieve it all and pick out all the bones. Add the meat/veg/lentil back into the soup and whizz up. You can always reserve a bit of the meat/veg/lentils and add it after whizzing for some texture. Add some milk to get it a nice soup consistency.

Hope it makes your mum feel better.

How sad for you all. And how lovely you are.

Pop the chicken carcass into a large saucepan, break it up if necessary, and cover with water. Include:
a peeled whole onion,
a stick of celery cut into large chunks,
a couple of cloves/pinch of ground cloves,
a few whole peppercorns/10 or so grinds of the pepper mill,
half a teaspoon of cinnamon,
a strip of lemon peel/a few drops of lemon oil (do not use lemon juice),
a pinch of saffron/2-3 pinches of turmeric.

Bring it all to the boil and simmer for an hour or so. (I don't really know how long, I just let it keep going and give it a poke every so often. When it looks and smells right, I switch off!)

Strain the soup so that you have only clear broth.

You can have the soup like this, or you can lightly cook some veg in it and liquidise. When you have strained the soup you can pick the meat out by hand and return it to the soup to be liquidised with the veg.

Don't be tempted to leave the onion in, it may give your mum wind.

Pearl barley is good in this, too.

Oh that sounds nice. I don't have a food-processor just a baby-food blender. Sweetcorn might be nice in it. And as much cream, milk and butter I can sneak in.

Thanks for the good wishes as well btw

As above , but chuck in a glug of sherry and some double cream after the sieving / blending . Makes the soup lovely and rich

Should mention that she is also diabetic. Since the seventies she has been obsessed with "low-sugar" aspartame-laden food and "low-fat" labelled stuff which is probably full of sugar to make up for the lack of taste.

She thought she was buying the healthier options all these decades years. Of the generation brought up on home-cooked fresh organic food (lived in Ireland during the war unlike my Dad who had a terrible diet of sugar sandwiches for dinner because his Dad worked at Tate and Lyle in the East End and even then he had seven siblings) but who bought right into the TV dinner and fast-food culture because for my parents, that was actually aspirational rather than something to be scorned and avoided.

Aspartame has been linked to dementia and it makes me so angry. Now that she has diabetes the one thing she DOES remember is that she can't have anything "naughty" so she is wasting away because EVERYTHING is bad in her mind. I just thought that I could convince her that soup is always good. Jewish penicillin and all that.

Thanks so much for your help