Superbowl Chili

We're in the middle of a deep freeze here in New England.  With the cold and the Superbowl approaching - even though our Patriots didn't make it this year :(  -  I decided to make a chili recipe using this recipe from Real Simple.  It's a black bean and zucchini chili.  I like it because it has some extra veggies thrown in to help make it a more balanced meal and it's so delicious and comforting.  If you're planning a Superbowl party, I think this is a great recipe to use - for everyone, even the Tubie in the house!

Table
This is a slow cooker recipe, but unfortunately, the night I decided to make it, it was too late to use the slow cooker.  No problem, though.  It's easy enough to just make on the stove top too.

I sauteed the onions in a deep pan for a while and then added the zucchini

In a separate pan, I cooked up the ground beef.  Then you really just add the hamburger and all the rest of the ingredients into the zucchini-onion mixture.

My son helped carry the canned goods from the pantry to the countertop.  If the pan wasn't already hot, he probably would have helped dump them in...  By the way, I can't believe how relatively full his face looks now - much different from the super-skinny boy of a year ago.

And this is the resulting colorful mixture:

Tube
To make the blenderized version of this recipe, I used 2 cups of the chili, but that actually turned out to be too much volume of a blend and required some batching of the remaining ingredients, so for the write up, I've taken the chili down to 1 1/2 cups.  I also used 2 slices of a big round multigrain sourdough bread (at about 150 calories a piece).  If I were to make this again, I might substitute one of those big slices with some whole grain (oatmeal, bulger, cereal, etc) - just to make this blend a little more fibrous, if you know what I mean. ahem.

After the Shepard's Pie blend, I was a little nervous that the tomato paste and ground beef combination might cause more red, greasy film on the extension tubes and syringes.  But this blend was actually really clean.   (The real culprit must have been the ketchup - lesson learned)

At 0.9 calories per cc, the calorie density is on the lower side of my typical blends, but still pretty decent and fairly comparable to a lot of formulas.  Of course if you wanted to bump that up, I'd probably add whole grain - in addition to the 2 slices of bread.

And here's the G-tube blenderized recipe:

Black Bean & Zucchini Chili
Whole Milk	1 cup
flavored Kefir - 1% milkfat	1/2 cup
Sliced Peaches (canned with light syrup)	7.5 oz
Black Bean & Zucchini Chili	1 1/2 cup
Trader Joes Multigrain Sourdough	2 slices
Sunflower Seed Oil	3 T
Children's Multivitamin	1/2 tablet
calcium chews supplement	1/2 chew
Volume (oz)	39
Cal/oz	27.7
Cal/cc	0.9
% Fat	25%
% Carbohydrates	57%
% Protein	18%

Mediterranean Stuffed Zucchini

Morty got his tube changed out this past week.  He is now a proud owner of the Mic Key button.  We have been waiting for this for a long time and we are so happy to finally have it.  It's taking a bit of getting used to... just to get into the new routine of filling the syringe/tube and administering.  It's just a slightly new system.   At the hospital, my husband requested that they give my son the same size Mic Key as the PEG tube.  Apparently they didn't listen to him, and we're now running a size smaller - 14 french now vs the previous 16 french.  We'll see if that has much of an effect.  I am blending the mix a little longer to make sure everything is smooth.

Table
Summer brings zucchini, and this week we bought a bunch of it at the farmer's market to make this stuffed zucchini dish.  Compared to a lot of stuffed recipes (stuffed cabbage, stuffed peppers, etc), this one is not tomato sauce based, so it's a little dry.  But it still has a variety of flavors with the cheese and pine nuts and sun-dried tomatoes , so it's pretty good.

Tube
After I made the zucchini, my husband and I ate a serving each, and I just put the other 2 servings in the blenderized g-tube version.  It included zucchini stuffed with the sausage, asiago cheese, pine nuts, sundried tomatoes, and scallion mixture.  I also actually threw in some of the zucchini that was hollowed out - seemed a waste to throw it out.   I added some cooked bulgur wheat for grains.  Side note: my dad used to make a cracked wheat breakfast cereal when I was growing up, that he called simply "mush".  It pretty much looks the same as cooked bulgur.

Here's the blenderized g-tube recipe:

Whole Milk	1 cup
flavored Kefir - 1% milkfat	1/2 cup
orange juice	1/2 cup
bulgur wheat	1/4 cup dry, cooked
stuffed zucchini (1/4 lb sausage)	2 serving
Sunflower Seed Oil	2 T
Dole cherry mixed fruit cup	1 container
Children's Multivitamin	1/2 tablet
calcium chews supplement	1/2 chew
Volume (oz)	40
Cal/oz	31.3
Cal/cc	1.0
% Fat	33%
% Carbohydrates	50%
% Protein	17%