Meal Ideas needed for elderly mum on chemo

[TildaTheCat]

Please can you give me your easiest, simple recipes for my lovely 78yr old mum? She's currently on chemo, has very little appetite but if I make her something, she will eat it.

Can't really tolerate anything spicy, so plain(ish) but nutritious will be best. I'll be cooking it for her and taking it round but I want to get together a variety of meals and seem to have the same few meals on repeat.

Thank you 😊

In my experience, small portions feel less overwhelming and stuff that doesn't need too much tiring chewing works well.

I did a lot of homemade soups for my DF, if you start with homemade chicken and veg stock (did you know you can make it in the slow cooker?) or good quality bought stock you can really pack the nutrition in. It's hydrating too.

Soups would be nice at this time of year, nutritious and warming, but easy to eat and digest

when mum was having chemo we always had ice lollies. I don’t know why but they seemed to help.

After every cycle , I craved poached eggs with spinach. Would something simple like that appeal?
My own mum struggled with creamy things, but tomato dishes worked well for her.
It may depend on the exact chemo.

Soups can be very filling for the amount of calories, but can be very approachable if not much appetite. I would go for quite carby/creamy (if she can tolerate it) such as leek & potato, Cullen skink, haddock chowder, cream of chicken etc. You can double butter toast iirc, so extra calories there.
I would agree with regular tiny amounts rather than large plates which can mean people eat nothing.

Thick milkshakes are pretty good, (those ones the teenagers drink frijj? Yopp? old)
Scrambled egg on a buttered muffin?
Coq au vin with mashed potato (does she need soft food?)
Single cutted up sausage with a hasselback potato (buttered)
Little baked potato with butter & cheese
scone, butter and jam, pancake, butter & jam
Rice pudding (can be enriched with egg & cream)
Custard (can be enriched with egg & cream)
Creamy chicken pasta with peas and mushrooms in.
Chocolate mousse (those Gu ones are nice!)

any of these should be able to be divided & frozen which can help with teeny portions.

How do you double butter please?

If you Google 'Food First' you will find a load of dietitian leaflets with ideas on adding calories and protein, and high calorie snacks.

The Macmillan leaflet on 'The Building Up Diet' is also excellent.

Basically add butter/ cream to everything and make sure you aren't buying low fat products.

I can’t remember properly, but it was along the lines of making toast & buttering it, possibly briefly toasting again so that all soaked in, then another layer of butter

Omelette might be nice and easy to eat, really filled with cheese it can pack in some calories and you could add extra yolks to the mix too. A peanut/peanut butter stew made with coconut milk is nice and is calorie dense and doesn't have to be spicy. Lasagne can be a small portion but still. lots of nutrition, add extra cream/cheese to the béchamel too.