Hey lost,
I know cooking was the last thing I felt like doing while having a fissure... Try to put the harder vegetables like the green beans and celery or any harder vegetables in earlier than the rest of the veggies that boiled down quicker. Chicken broth won't make harder stools in my opinion...:)
I don't know if you like Lentils but Progresso has a soup and it's really high in fiber. All beans are really high in fiber and make great bm's in my opinion. They cause a lot of gas though so if you have an active fissure, sometimes just passing gas can be a killer, as it was in my case...It's a double edged sword as you probably already know, :roll:
Hope this helps

Yup what Dawn said :)
Adding beef/chicken broth shouldn't cause hard stools IMO. It didn't for me and was a cheap way to add some flavor.
And yep, I cook things "in order" as well. Usually the first to go in are potatoes (red potatoes cook faster BTW) and green beans. Then broccoli/cauliflower and finally carrots. You'll get it right with some trial and error ... keep in mind that I'm a 30-something male computer engineer and don't exactly possess great culinary prowess. If I can do it, you can do too :)

I am ashamed to say that I have not cooked in ages, but do want to have ago at the soup. Do you liquidisze it when done, NG? Very glad you came and gave us the recipe. Also, do you take the skins off the potatoes?
On the same subject-food. I have been eating a small sliver of chocolate cake these last few days, which my husband had bought, and not sure if it's wishful thinking, but it seems to help me poop, along with my MOM and Peri-Colace quarter of a pill. Always knew I would find a way to get chocolate back in my life...

Hey Savaici, my culinary speciality is fried eggs and Cup 'O Noodles so there's nothing to be ashamed of hahahahaha! Oh yeah and I'm really good at TV dinners ... wanna be my sous chef?
Anyway how do you mean by "liquidize"? Do you mean to turn everything into mushy liquid and consume it that way? If so, then nope. I just leave it as-is, boiled to the point of being soft, but nothing beyond that. If I've misunderstood the question, though, just let me know.
About the potatoes: I'm generally too lazy to take the skins off. I did in the beginning though and the soup tastes a bit better that way if you ask me (kind of a "cleaner" taste is the best way I can put it). But I'm so used to eating it now that I don't really taste it so I no longer skin them (in other words I'm not exactly eating the soup for the flavor :)). But some people have problems digesting certain veggie and fruit skins, so it may not be a bad idea initially.

I am afraid that I have been virtually existing on tv dinners, the weight watchers ones with a variety of three. I just went into terror-mode about eating. I am still doing that, but introducing little bits and pieces. I cut out cheese, and cut right back on coffee, mixing it with watered down skim milk. Today had three grapes...no skins.
I meant blending the soup to a puree, using a liquidizer. I will probably go with that, just making a small amount of soup in the beginning. Sous chef, ha!!

I finally had success with veggie soup last night. Followed by a wonderful morning glory! Thanks NG!
I used a large pot and filled it with cauliflower, brocolli, 2 sliced onions, and a big bag of sliced carrots. Salt and garlic powder (I was out of garlic). 30 minutes on med heat.
I kept checking every 5 min. or so for tenderness of carrots.
Worked out great and smelled good. Must be the cauliflower I think. Used a little soy souce after I put some in a bowl. I have enough for a couple of nights.
Thanks everyone.

Awesome, there ya go dude :) Your soup sounds pretty similar to mine except I've got string beans in there and less or no onion. It takes 30 minutes to 1 hour to cook properly for me depending on the ingredients.
Hopefully it brings you smooth pooping for days to come! Haha. If it does work out well, next time you can try working in other ingredients. Oh yeah and let me know if you become a angel gas machine after eating it daily. I sure as hell did

So I was about to start a topic, but I think I'd just squeeze it in here instead, it seems to be a pretty active soup thread :)
Today I made a pretty good minestrone soup, seperately boiled shrimp and added it to the soup.
But the problem was my bm after was HORRENDOUS. I was waiting about 1-2 minutes in total for it to completely come out. This was after a heavenly bm in the morning too! Now I'm typing this in the bath because I can't take the pain out of the bath. But it's great lol
So in the soup i first sauteed half an onion, 3 cloves of garlic, and celery in 3 TEAspoons of olive oil. I then added 2 cups of veggie broth, skinned carrots, parsely, diced tomatoes, a can of red and a can of white kidney beans, 3 cups of water and 1/2 a TEAspoon of dried basil spice and 1/4 TEAspoon of dried thyme spice. I brought it to a boil for maybe 7-10 minutes but brought it back down to simmering and left it for about 30 minutes then added whole wheat noodles.
That doesn't sound wrong does it? But the problem was I only DRAINED the kidney beans, and didn't rinse them. Could that have been the reason for the low quality bm?
I read online after I ate it that you need to rinse them, then soak them for several hours before you actually cook them, and that will take away the gassiness and possibly the hard, time-consuming stool I endured.
Also, for my next soup, as I add the noodles, I'm going to skin an avocado and shred it into to soup as well. As avocados are the highest in fibre than anything, but are terrible to eat alone. I also sprinkle flax on the soup as I do to everything right now.
Thanks :)

Hi Adam
Your soup certainly sounds good. However, I have cut all "enriched white flour" products out of my diet, along with meats and dairy.
I went away from soups for a while and simply ate steamed veggies every night. I would add spices to taste when they were on my plate.
This is not a great diet by the way. I lost 18 lbs in the first 13 days of being diagnosed with a fissure. I have added beans to my diet last week and have only lost 3 lbs in the past 8 days.
I have experimented with chicken and 2 types of fish and was always left with painful BMs.
I guess my advice would be to watch the pastas. They are not worth it to me. I have just started getting my life back and do not want to mess that up. I am now only down a few hours a day, thank goodness.
Good luck searching for that perfect diet!