Having been on a PEG since April (and will be for the rest of my life since I am NPO), I am blending all of my meals. I bolus feed 3-4 times a day. Essentially I am eating the same meals I ate pre-PEG. There was a pretty decent learning curve to become proficient with the blender (a Vitamix 5200). I push all of my blends with a syringe. I prefer them as thick as possible to avoid diluting the calorie count (the goal is 2Cal/mL) or increasing the volume too much. I haven't found anything I cannot blend. Pie, nuts, fruits, meat, pizza, salad, cake, etc. I am eating better and less sodium, animal fat, etc. I have a 20FR Mic-Key button type feeding tube and that works very well for me. No dangling tube as with a standard PEG. One of my standard blends is baked, skinned, chicken breast, quinoa or rice medley, vegetables, protein powder, honey, macadamia nuts, EVOO, chicken stock, EV avocado oil and coconut water for thinning. It has to smell and taste good too. Food vapors come up from the stomach to the taste buds so you can "taste" blends that are injected directly into the stomach. To help the bowel along I always add 180mL of a fruit blend to every meal. The oils help smooth the blend and the nuts have a dramatic amount of calories in a very small volume (440 cal/80g). I see you opted for an NG tube instead of a PEG. They had to insert an NG tube to inflate my stomach with air for the PEG installation - it was a miserable experience! It would be challenging to blend for an NG tube. If I had to do it over again - I would have gotten a PEG to begin with. I toughed it out during treatment and paid the price.

I was on formula in the beginning and I had severe energy and weight loss problems. This ceased when I started blending real food and that is pretty much the consensus of people who are blending their own food. I realize that it may not be practical to invest in a high powered blender for a 3-4 month of tube feeding during the initial treatment. There are packaged alternatives to formula now. Real Food Blends and Nestle Compleat come to mind. Insurance will typically pay for prescription food. Real Food Blends is lobbying insurers to reimburse for their product and some already do.