Dealing with Dimentia: Strange Food Choices

With dimentia, I knew that my grandmother may forget how to prepare foods properly. Almost every time I go to her house, I check to make sure she didn’t leave the stove on or didn’t forget to put something back in the fridge. What I was not prepared for was some of the strange food combinations she comes up with on the bad days:

(Please  understand, these combinations are shared not to tease my grandmother but to #1, let others know that they are not alone in some of the surprises that pop up when caring for a loved one with dimentia, and #2, because you gotta laugh sometimes!)

Ice Cream Floats: Can’t find a diet dr pepper? Pour some vinegarette salad dressing on your vanilla ice cream! … My grandmother’s logic that day was that dr pepper is a dark-colored liquid and it tastes delicious on ice cream. Her vinegarette (grape?) was also a dark liquid. So why wouldn’t it taste good on ice cream?

Eggplant Casserole: First of all, my grandmother doesn’t like eggplant. But her brother gave her one so she thought she better give it a try. I am not sure what all she put in that concoction, but she did use coconut flakes instead of cheese.

Cereal and Milk: My grandmother decided that she needs more protein in her diet. So she added some chicken and purple hull peas to her bowl of bran flakes and soy milk.

Cornbread and Buttermilk: Sometimes you have to improvise when other people do your shopping. Sometimes you have to use sweet soy milk on your cornbread. … She warmed this up in a bowl along with some soup and mozzarella cheese. I could barely stand to watch my grandmother eat this! But she wasn’t about to admit that she had come up with bad combinations two days in a row.

Those don’t go together: My grandmother LOVES soup. I am pretty sure it is one of her favorite meals! So why did she pull the chicken and vegetables out of the liquid then walk away? It looks like she started separate piles for the green beans and chicken. In her mind she just “needed something to do.”

Peanut Butter goes with Everything: Another thing she is fond of is peanut butter. The same week that my grandmother separated her chicken and vegetables from her soup, she also put globs of peanut butter on her chicken and beans. We were happy to spend 3+ hours meal prepping so my grandmother would have some delicious options throughout the week. But it is discouraging to walk in on day two to find that most of those meals have been ruined. I think we will just take 3 or 4 meals at a time going forward.

Too much Trouble: In what I assume was an attempt to save energy, she put two large chunks of cheddar cheese and a whole apple in her bowl of chili.