Mom in the Kitchen – Update on Joan
2013
It has been awhile since I have posted an update on Mom and how she is doing. She’s doing great. Not that it’s easy. Most of you may know that Mom had a stroke, almost 2 years ago – 2 years this coming April. Mom has been steadily doing better and it is just recently that I am seeing more improvements. Yesterday it really hit me when she decided to make muffins and did it completely on her own. Well, I took them out of the oven, but besides that they are 100% hers. She followed a recipe from a magazine – Cranberry muffins – and they turned out great!
I was also thinking that all of a sudden Mom has been more busy socially. She must be feeling more secure with her new way of being. Her social life and her friends were always a big part of her life, but without being able to communicate, that was hard to keep up after her stroke. So this week and last, and this looks like a routine for the next few weeks, Mom has an aphasia therapy group Wednesdays, volunteering at the soup kitchen Tuesdays and a pot luck painting get together with artist friends towards the end of the week ..where she is off to right now, and what she made the muffins for. I will post some of her recent and some post-stroke paintings soon too. I really like them.
You can really see someones inner strength when they suffer a big life change and get knocked down. It is hard and it’s like you lose you’re identity of who you think you are, and now you have a whole new set of rules to go by. Mom’s love in life is reading.. and now, no more reading. Now she listens to the radio – a lot! But she is determined and I think magazines work well for her aphasia. Short pieces of information and pictures. Her reading must be getting better because I helped her a bit with the recipe..but she read and figured it mostly on her own. That’s a big step, but sometimes its a guess.
So she’s keeping active, out walking every day. Finding projects she can do and I think she has been painting a little more lately, which is a great sign as that always has been her biggest passion.
Here are some of the other recipes she made that I took pictures of, mostly last November. And each one of these were delicious!
She actually made Brussel sprouts taste quite good, that’s impressive!
Salads..
& Dahl with butternut squash that was quite good!
Mom used to be a raw foodist, and was 100% for several years, but since her stroke she has been eating more cooked foods. Mom was in the hospital for a few months before coming home and in her therapy there we taught her how to make green smoothies again. Ever since then, 2 times a day, every day, she makes us all huge glasses of green smoothies. We eat a lot of salads and sometimes mom eats all raw, but I know she gravitates to more cooked. I think just for grounding and comfort, but she keeps it in check and I think she has found a healthy balance that works for her right now.
