What are your favorite Stage 3 liquid diet recipes?

Hi All,

I'm getting sleeved on May 16, and I start the liquid diet on April 25th. I'm looking for some recipes that worked for you when you were on Stage 3 pre-op and post-op surgery. When I did the liquid diet trial back in January, I found soups, V8, and tomato juice to be the most satisfying, but I'm open to any of your favorite recipes or creations. You know...the one food/liquid that satisfied your hungry during stage 3!

Thanks!!

Karen :)

Could you explain what your stage 3 requirements are? Not all of us have the same stages with the same names! :)

Oh! Good Point! My requirements are no lumps, no bumps in liquid. Anything with lumps or bumps needs to be put in the blender and puréed to a liquid.

Hm. This sounds like something in between my full liquid phase and pureed stage.

Pureed chili? Pureed meaty spaghetti sauce?

I pureed a lot of curries since the sauce kept things wet.

Pureeing wetter soups might work better for you, since you're more like.. thick liquids?

Thanks for the ideas! I'm thinking wetter soups as well. I like the chili idea, but I'm checking with my dietitian on the hamburger, but I could easily skip the hamburger. :)

I wasn't really hungry during that stage or really since for that matter! Haha! It sounds like you like the more savory stuff and that was kind of a challenge for me because so many options are sweet and I wasn't digging that sweet stuff at all.

The best thing I did before surgery was to save all my chicken bones and leftover roasted chickens, celery, onions, and carrots in the freezer to make a rich bone broth. After it simmered covered all day, I strained it. I put it in the fridge and skimmed the fat off the top the next day. Then, I rapidly boiled it down until there was just enough to put in an ice cube tray. Basically, for mine, I figured out that one cube worked in one half cup of water. Anyway, I mostly drank those plain, but I would also mix them with carrot purée and milk for carrot soup. I had cooked the carrots, puréed them and froze them in ice cube trays, too. I used the bone broth to thin refried beans for bean soup. I even tried this sort of savory peanut soup that I made with broth,pb2, a little light coconut milk and a little lime concentrate (NOT real lime juice), not sure I recommend that unless you are sure you can have those foods. Later on, I realized that it might have worked to make soup with some types of baby food.

I drank lots of Fairlife milk. Can you have plain Greek yogurt thinned with milk?

i will tell you this, I was super duper prepared with lots of options and there ended up being a pretty limited list of things I wanted to try. I have a huge box of stuff in the basement I never even tried. It's hard to explain just how different it is after you lose your appetite for a long time, but it is awesome! Good luck!

I never thought of freezing the broth and other pureed foods in ice cube trays. Brilliant idea!! Thanks for the idea. My surgeon has a dietitian that works for him, so I'm working with her and clearing any foods that I'm unsure I'll be allowed to eat. I want my recovery to go as smooth as possible so that I can recover quickly. :)

I can have yogurt, or even cottage cheese as long as it's pureed and "drinkable".

I've been stocking up on ready made chicken and beef broth, V8 juice, and Vitamin Water...those seem to the trick. Best to be over prepared in my case, so that when I'm "hangry" I have something ready to go! Thanks for sharing your ideas with me.

You are welcome!

Speaking of cottage cheese, I read an idea in a book using cottage cheese. It basically said that if you don't like protein shakes because they are too sweet, you should use some cottage cheese in your shake because it is a little bitter and will take down the sweet while adding protein. I added both cottage cheese AND unsweetened cocoa to my protein shakes to lessen the sweetness.

Also, this sounds pretty similar to my full liquids stage. The rule that helped me discriminate what I could have was that it needed to be thin enough that I could drink it through a straw--if I was allowed to drink through a straw, of course!