I recently had surgery to fix a deviated septum. This meant I could only eat soft, squishy foods for a number of days. How do you eat squishy foods and still manage to eat *healthy* foods?

First let me say of course that you should plan this out BEFORE you come home from surgery. You want everything to be in the house and waiting for you. Also, you want to talk with your doctor about any restrictions. If high salt is going to interfere with your medicine, you don't want to be eating high salt squishy food.

The key here is two-fold. First, you need the squishy food because your mouth or nose or whatever part of you can't handle chewing. So you need it to have a soft texture. Second, you need it to be nutritious. If you just ate ice cream all day long your body would have trouble healing up. It wouldn't have the nutrition it needed to rebuild skin cells and muscle cells and whatever else it was doing. The better you eat, the better you heal.

Water
OK water isn't really a food but make sure you drink a LOT of water. When you are healing your body needs that water to move vitamins around, to build new cells, to flush out toxins and much more. Keep a glass of water by the bed. Depending on what you had done you might use a straw - other types of surgery (wisdom teeth for example) are clear that you should NEVER use a straw. Check on this with your doctor.

Scrambled Eggs
A perfect staple for healing. Eggs are full of protein and provide a lot of nutrients for body rebuilding. Make them plain and scramble them very thoroughly. They'll be nice and mushy and give your body just what it needs. If you're up to it, you can add in a variety of herbs for different flavors.

Chicken / Beef Broth
Soup is definitely good food. This gets you in liquids and protein all together in a nice, lukewarm package. Make sure any foods you eat are lukewarm so your body is not being hit with extremes of hot or cold.

Butternut Squash
Butternut, acorn, there are a number of squashes that do very well. Mashed potatoes get too far into the "lots of starch with no nutrition" direction, but if you stay in the squash family you can get some good vitamin content.

Pierogies
These are super soft ravioli type items filled with squished up potato, onion and cheese. You eat them with sour cream. On one hand they are a bit like mashed potatoes - but on the other hand they are at least giving you a few food groups together.

Protein Shakes
I am a huge fan of protein shakes. This is perfect liquid food for your body. They have a lot of vitamins plus the all-so-important protein that your body needs to create its new connections. Make very sure you get enough protein into your daily intake while healing.

Ice Cream / Pudding
There are low sugar versions of these, but even so I only list these as fallbacks if you simply cannot eat anything else. You want to be giving your body lots of nutrition during these important days, not "junk food" that does not help with the rebuilding process. For ice cream, make sure it's well stirred so it's very soft.

Again the key is to talk with your doctor about anything to avoid, so you do not interfere with your medicine. Also, make sure everything is waiting for you when you get home so you do not have to go out shopping!


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