Christmas meals in rehab

Merry Christmas! I hope you have a nice relaxing day today with friends, family, food, and gifts.

With mom in the Manor Care rehab facility, my brother and I spent Christmas here with her. We even ate the Christmas Eve supper and Christmas Day dinner meals here.

The Christmas Eve meal was different and interesting. Maybe the food wasn't all that different for Norwegians, but as my brother and I are not full blooded Norwegians, it was different for us. The meal was:

• meatballs,
• mashed potatoes,
• mixed vegetables,
• ice cream,
• lefse, and
• lutefisk.

Yup, the lefse and lutefisk made this meal a traditional Christmas Eve meal for Norwegian-Americans. My mother's roommate just loved the meal. For me... it was different. I have eaten lefse many times before. Lutefisk... this was the first time for me. I decide to try the lutefisk even though I heard jokes about how bad lutefisk was. I'll try most things once.

I survived eating the lutefisk. I even ate half of the piece my brother got as he wasn't too thrilled with it after eating one bite. I was only able to eat half of the second piece of Lutefisk before I reached my limit.

The lutefisk wasn't bad. It didn't have the smell it supposedly could have had from being soaked in lye. The lutefisk did have the gelatinous bubble-wrap white appearance.

A bit of trivia from the Wikepedia site on lutefisk is:

The Wisconsin Employees' right to know law regarding toxic substances specifically exempts Lutefisk (Wisc. Stat. 101.58(2)(j)(2)(f))

My mother ate her lutefisk and was happy I had my first taste of lutefisk, even if it wasn't that big of a deal to me. She informed the world and told most everyone I was having my first taste of lutefisk.

The Christmas meal was more traditional:

• scalloped potatoes
• cream corn,
• bread,
• pumpkin pie with whipped topping and cranberries, and
  
• ham.

The ham was a problem as I don't eat ham; so I gave my slice to my brother and got a turkey pot pie from the meal server, which was good.

This afternoon the facility had fruit punch and cookies. Yum!, but I am slowly and steadily gaining weight.

Today the facility is relatively quiet as many residents are out on a day pass to spend the day with their family. A few families got use of a conference room to hold their Christmas celebration. Grandmas to grandkids. The grandkids looked somber and 'putting in time' with the family. Probably not their idea of a fun Christmas.

Wanda's family had their celebration last night and we chatted with them for a while. They brought pizzas in for their celebration and I ended up having one slice. I didn't need it but I have a hard time saying no to offers of food.