Here are some. Here is a link that might be useful: Desserts

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

The canola oil is important to the recipe. This was the answer to the same concern about canola oil, from a website that I get sent to Disney for trying to post. The canola oil story is a HOAX!! And that's all there is to it. Any "warnings" from an e-mail are 99 percent certain to be lies and hoaxes. Don't buy into it. "What we have here is a bit of truth about a product's family history worked into a hysterical screed against the product itself. There is no earthly reason to give any credence to this rumor -- Canola oil is not the horrifying product this widely-disseminated e-mail makes it out to be, nor has the FDA turned loose on the American public a health scourge worthy of being named one of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. An appreciation of what this scare is based upon begins with a better understanding of what canola oil and how it came into being. The rape plant (Brassica napus) is a member of the mustard family, as claimed in the e-mail. However, before associations between rape and mustard gas set in too strongly, it should be noted turnip, cabbage, watercress, horseradish, and radish are also members of this family of plants. Rapeseed oil has been used for cooking for centuries in Europe, India, China, and Japan. As modern science is finding out, its previous use wasn't necessarily a guarantee of safety. Cooking at high temperatures with unrefined rapeseed oil now appears to be related to an increased risk of lung cancer because at high temperatures cooking oil gives off chemicals capable of causing mutations in cells. Unrefined rapeseed oil is particularly notable for this, but other oils also have this association. Those intent upon doing large amounts of wok cooking with any sort of cooking oil should therefore lower their frying temperature from the 240C to 280°C called for in Chinese cooking to 180°C. Rapeseed oil naturally contains a high percentage (30-60%) of erucic acid, a substance associated with heart lesions in laboratory animals. For this reason rapeseed oil was not used for consumption in the United States prior to 1974, although it was used in other countries. (Americans chose to use it as a lubricant to maintain Allied naval and merchant ships during World War II.) In 1974, rapeseed varieties with a low erucic content were introduced. Scientists had found a way to replace almost all of rapeseed's erucic acid with oleic acid, a type of monounsaturated fatty acid. (This change was accomplished through the cross-breeding of plants, not by the techniques commonly referred to as "genetic engineering.") By 1978, all Canadian rapeseed produced for food use contained less than 2% erucic acid. The Canadian seed oil industry rechristened the product "canola oil" (Canadian oil) in 1978 in an attempt to distance the product from negative associations with the word "rape." Canola was introduced to American consumers in 1986. By 1990, erucic acid levels in canola oil ranged from 0.5% to 1.0%, in compliance with U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) standards. This light, tasteless oil's popularity is due to the structure of its fats. It is lower in saturated fat (about 6%) than any other oil. Compare this to the high saturated fat content of peanut oil (about 18%) and palm oil (at an incredibly high 79%). It also contains more cholesterol-balancing monounsaturated fat than any oil except olive oil and has the distinction of containing Omega-3 fatty acids, a polyunsaturated fat reputed to not only lower both cholesterol and triglycerides, but also to contribute to brain growth and development. In other words, it's a healthy oil. One shouldn't feel afraid to use it because of some Internet scare loosely based on half-truths and outright lies."

Head to your local library and check for "The Mediterranean Diet Cookbook" by Nancy Harmon Jenkins. If they don't have it have the library get it through inter-library loan. Check the link below for more information. You shouldn't need all that much in speciality foods that you can't get through your regular grocer. -Grainlady Here is a link that might be useful: Mediterranean Diet Pyramid