I was recently gifted three cases of Ensure (one vanilla, two chocolate) and discovered it's true the vanilla flavor makes a great coffee creamer. I'm told that's also true of the chocolate. Guess I'll find out when the vanilla runs out. For now, though, the vanilla Ensure turns my coffee into something that bears a strong resemblance to Coffeemate French vanilla. It was a pleasant surprise. And possibly semi-healthy. The bottle claims it's "plus high protein."
I was skeptical of the possibility of Ensure being remotely edible -- back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and I worked as a restorative therapy aid (Edmonds Villa Care paid me to walk old people) Ensure was a disgusting liquid that came in cans and got poured into comatose patients' NG tubes. I had zero desire to ingest it myself, and, to be honest, still don't except as a tablespoon or two at a time in my coffee.
It did occur to me as a I remembered my long ago days as a people walker that the ancient crones and dirty old men I cajoled into doing laps* around the nursing home were probably younger than I am now. Lots of stroke victims in their 60s, for example. One of the odd things about any nursing home is there will be a bunch of people in their 60s (strokes, early onset dementia) and a bunch of nonagenarians (90s) and not much in between -- and the really old patients will be still mentally fine but have just gotten too physically fragile to remain independent. So those of us who are "only" in our 70s and 80s can look forward to coasting for another decade or two. Maybe.
*We did do laps. The building was a square -- four long hallways and a courtyard in the middle -- so we'd walk in a big circle.
