This is so awesome!!! You are so generous to post and share! I am trying to figure out if these are the same recipes from a magazine that my late mother bought me a subscription for when I got my firsta partment in 2001. The only recipe I have handy s is the Secret Chocoalte Chip Cookies (still a hit). I'm tyring to find the lasagna recipe...it was like "Grandma's Best Lasagna" or something...had cottage, ricotta, parmasean, and moz cheeses. I had so much fun with these magazines, and exploring the recipes each month was such a great way to learn how to cook!! Thanks again!

No, but the people at the site below seem to like it judging by the number of recipes posted. Might be worth a try. Here is a link that might be useful: Recipes for Carbquik

Mechanical soft diet refers to the consistancy mainly of the meat. Mechanical soft foods are very well cooked with lots of gravy or sauce for the meats. Meats can be cut up finely or med fine like ground beef. Also meat can be chopped in chunks. It will depend on the persons degree of chewing/ swallowing difficulty. Meats should be sliced very thin and always have gravy or sauce with them to aid in swallowing. Any foods can be eaten on a mechanical soft diet as long as they are cooked very tender and the meat is the proper consistency. If needed you can puree the meat or even all foods. Add nectar, juice, gravy, broth, milk or other calorie dense liquids to foods to puree.Even pureed foods can vary in consistancy. There are generally 3 consistancies used: pudding constancy, nectar consistancy and thin consistancy (almost the consistancy of milk). Some speech therapists also recommend using applesauce consistancy. The best thing to do is consult a speech therapist and your doctor if the person is having swallowing problems so a modified barium swallow test can be given. This test will assist in determining the proper consistancy of foods/liquids to avoid choking and aspiration. I hope I helped. Good luck to you. Debra Truncale, RD, LD

You can put textured vegetable protein (TVP) in chili, and eventually if you find that he likes the taste, put it in other things too. Vegetarian chili is also good, plenty of protein in beans. Morningstar Farms makes fake chicken patties, nuggets and buffalo wings that are really good, even to people who are not into fake meat. You could try cooking a lot of chinese food, with mostly vegetables and the meat just for flavoring rather than a main ingredient. Things like fried rice. Some pasta dishes use meat mainly for flavoring too, like pasta with bacon and broccoli and spaghetti carbonara. Cheese-based dishes and egg-based dishes both have lots of fat and protein, which are probably what he craves. Homemade macaroni and cheese is so good. Meatless lasange. Spinach is the best, with whole milk ricotta, yum! Risotto. Enchiladas are much better with vegetables than they are with meat, in my opinion. Spinach enchiladas especially. Try making meals out of a few heavy dishes that he really likes that are traditionally sides, and just leave out the main course. For instance (I don't know if he likes this stuff but it is just a suggestion), deviled eggs, potato salad, macaroni and cheese, and a vegetable. What about fish? I don't really know what gout is, but maybe he can eat fish, or shellfish - clam chowder. Corn chowder is good too. I sometimes just serve salad and baked potatoes with lots of toppings (butter, sour cream, chives, fake bacon bits, broccoli, grated cheese, salsa). Twice-baked potatoes are also good. Add warm potatoes and/or cauliflower to green salads to make them a bigger part of the meal, and experiment with making your own dressings, which are usually so much better than bottled. Also experiment with adding cheeses to salad. Spinach salad is a nice change if you don't usually have that.