Any ideas on soft foods for elderly mom to eat besides the usual mashed potatoes, applesauce, ice cream?

Countrygal, there are many resources online if you google "pureed food for seniors+recipes". Will you be making the food or someone else? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUTOY-MQzU0

Once you start to think about it there are lots of foods that are ordinarily soft

squash and rutabaga are often served mashed
polenta with your favourite pasta sauce
serve those mashed potatoes cold as potato salad
refried beans
hummus
almost any soup can be whizzed with a stick blender and seems like normal food
custards, both sweet and savoury
pumpkin pie (without the crust)
rice or tapioca pudding (cooked very soft or pureed if needed)
yogurt
oatmeal or cream of wheat with lots of brown sugar and a pat of butter
those little cups of applesauce come in lots of different fruit combinations

Here are some suggestions: Bread pudding, turkey meatloaf, eggs,
omelets, casseroles, bananas, avocados, cottage cheese, smoothies, homemade cream of tomato soup, shepherd's pie, mashed sweet potatoes. Salmon pie without crust Look online for some recipes with these ingredients. Make sure water intake is good to prevent dehydration on a soft diet. Hope you find some good recipes for your mom.

Puddings and jellos and squashes and soups with breads in them. Custards, and shakes and thick smoothies. And as the CountryGal says, almost anything can be made into puree, even my infamous Buffalo Hot Wing Pasta Sauce and noodles.

I make my 90 year old mom, chicken soup, and different beans. I add proteins (steak, pork etc) then purée them. I meal prep once a week for her, portion out lunch and dinner for the week. They are delicious, I add lots of produce to give her a balanced hearty meal. That’s how I got her to eat again.

Look on the Gerber's shelf in the supermarket for alternatives, also.

Deviled eggs or egg salad, my mom loves both, so easy and something different

You can get a NINJA machine from Walmart or Amazon for about $50. Prepare a daily milk shake using Ensure or other nutritional drink plus about one or two cups of ice cream, and add a little milk to make the drink smoother. The nutrition drink comes in various levels of nutrition and can provide about half of the nutrients for daily living for an elderly person, depending on activity, and the ice cream can boost the caloric intake to provide energy and alertness and maintain body weight. The NINJA is a well engineered system and the containers and covers can be washed in the dishwasher and used daily. It takes about five minutes to prepare the drink that is delicious and satisfying. I have been doing this for my wife for six months and she has regained quite a bit of her former weight. She is not on soft foods and eats one hot meat and veg. meal at noon in addition to several snacks during the rest of the day. She starts the day with about one third of the shake and finishes the rest of it during the day. She has a light supper and fruit around 6 pm. At one point my wife seemed not able to swallow and we had tried several foods before settling on the NINJA, but somehow the swallowing ability seemed to return to her; we don't know how but it saved her life.

Souffles!

Anything Healthy that can be Pureed.

I used to make all sorts of soups for my Husband.
I would make them a bit thicker with added veggies like carrots, sweet potato rather than flour, pasta or rice.
I would process them as much as I needed to. I would portion them into 2 cup Mason or Ball jars and pop them in the freezer.
A few of the soups I made were:
Loaded Baked Potato soup, Split Pea with ham, Stuffed pepper or a stuffed cabbage soup, Beef Barley, Tomato soup (I would roast pounds and pounds of tomatoes if I happened to see them at the close out corner of the store)

One of the other things that I made for him and he loved...he had always been a pizza guy would eat it anytime he could. I made the Cauliflower Pizza crust, pre baked all the toppings and he could eat that with no problem, later I did process it and while it did not look like pizza it did taste good.

Grits or cream of wheat with an egg cooked on top of it. I started adding the egg for an extra protein boost.

I also switched his dinner and breakfast. He was more alert in the morning and I started giving him his largest meal then so breakfast was often the soup or the girts with egg, lunch might be scrambled eggs or yogurt with fruit and dinner again yogurt or cream of wheat.

I would also make pudding, custard. He loved Key Lime pie so I would make the filling and pour it into little ramekins and bake that. I would get about 5 or 6 and he would have that mid afternoon sometimes.

As far as appetizing goes what you puree may not look great but the flavor is there. When I was a kid we took care of my Grandma and my Dad would process our dinner and put it on a plate for her just like our meal, a mound of beef or whatever (he would use the gravy to thin meats so that it could process), a spoon full of the veggie, a scoop of potato or whatever else there was. She was able to eat and identify what she was eating. Far different than tossing everything into the blender and having one pureed mixture on the plate.

My dad loved crustless cheesecake with whipped cream as a daily treat when he was in hospice care - I made a lower carb version.

Also made “oopsie rolls”
as a soft food/bread substitute he didn’t need to chew. Recipe is on the Internet. I’d make a batch and freeze them - thaw for a few seconds in the microwave.

I've had some nasty dental work done, so I've gotten to know the soup and dairy sections of the grocery store. They make every flavor of soup from potato-leek and corn chowder to cheese, and the yogurt flavors today are delicious. I had lemon meringue pie greek yogurt for breakfast today, and my mom beat me to the caramel apple flavor. Just watch out for the "light" versions which use artificial sweeteners and cut down the nutritional value.

Momsmeals.com has a great selection of pureed meals, also Hormel health labs

scrambled eggs, what if you mix some pureed vegetables (peas or spinach) with the mashed potatoes - would she eat it?

If you google "dysphagia recipes" you will find a ton of recipes that can be made at different consistencies. You can also google "mechanically soft recipes. Both of these will give you plenty of different recipes that are really tasty and they can also give ideas on how to look more tantalizing. My boyfriend and I both have dysphagia (difficulty swallowing) so I have been trying new recipes and some are better then "regular" food (in my opinion). Good luck and let yourself be creative.

Not everyone has the time, ability or inclination to prepare a modified diet 3 times a day forever, when you are dealing with the other challenges of full time caregiving it can often seem like one chore too many. We were fortunate that our meals on wheels provided frozen meals with several modified options that I was able to pull out on days when cooking seemed too much to ask, pricey but worth it. Some people will tell you that supplements like ensure and mass produced foods from companies like Hormel are horrible dietary choices but by this stage healthy diets are less important than calories, don't be afraid to rely on any convenience foods she finds palatable.

How about bananas,yogurt,smoothies. My mother had throat cancer and she could tolerate Ensure with ice cream blended in. If you decide to do smoothies, there are recipes that have fruit,vegetables, and protein powder blends. A dietician or nutritionist may also be helpful.

One of my stepfather's favorites: Steam cauliflower, mushrooms and chopped shallots. Puree the mixture and you are good to go. He also liked pureed butternut squash or pumpkin. I think you have to be careful puree-ing hot stuff in a blender, so you may have to cool a little and re-heat. We found a little bit pricey blender called Baby Brezza would steam--on a timer, no less!--and then puree anything. The timer was helpful. Hormel makes a series of about a half dozen already pureed entrees that live on the pantry shelf and heat in the micro in one minute, and he liked those. Some of them were actually tasty enough to use as a dip for the rest of the family. We got those online from Healthy Kin. (We never found them locally). I think there is a website called dysphagia dot com that had helpful ideas. Can she eat salad whizzed through a little food chopper? With enough moisture perhaps added to aid swallowing? Hardware stores and such usually carry one. I think ours is made by Black & Decker, but I'm sure there are others. All my love to you. It is a challenge to try to make it appealing....

You've had lots of great suggestions here.  I was on a puree/sof food diet after surgery I had made lasagna for my family and saved a little of the ricotta mixture & sauce for myself.  just put a little in a bowl, sauce on top and warmed in the microwave.  It was great!

Surprisingly, many seniors start wanting Fish Sticks! My DH said it was easier to eat the fish sticks than anything else because they were soft! I would cook him as many as he wanted every day.

On another note, we had a family member who had no teeth for 6 months and he said pureed steak was wonderful - it was some of the veggies that were awful.

You can also use Junior Baby Foods!

Tofu might be helpful as a protein source and there's lots of stuff you can do with it. Roasted in chunks, but still very tender. Kind of bland for me, but with sauces, you can dress it up. Also a nice way to add protein to something like fruit smoothies for treats/desserts.

You can Buy frozen riced vegetables. For my elderly dog I had a hand mixer and I would make food into little pieces or pureed. Sweet potatoes with cinnamon, avocados, baked apples or applesauce, Rice pudding, Meat pureed with vegetables your mom likes. Acorn squash with sugar free maple syrup & cinnamon. Bananas, berries & YOGURT: I highly recommend Fage plain yogurt, that you can sweeten with Truvia, A natural and healthy sweetener that has no aftertaste. Yogurt is great to mix with all kinds of things. I mix it with chicken and vegetables & add spices that are mild. Think about smoothees, and see if you can get your mom to try them. Brown rice is much better than white rice, And you can get it bag by Uncle Ben's. Best wishes

SOUP, SOUP AND MORE SOUP

Yes, puree food is not so fun. My brother could eat some foods without puree so you would have to test. Soft and even texture worked best and adding fat - butter, olive oil or coconut oil helps it go down and adds needed calories. Soft food that worked for a while - salmon w/butter, Trader Joes turkey meatloaf(other brands may work) with extra tomato sauce, summer squash, oatmeal with coconut oil lots of maple syrup. Also sweet potato with lots of butter. Mashed white potato he had a little trouble with which was a bummer.

I ate cream of wheat with butter and "Bene-protein" every day while in the hospital. I had a very hard time with solid foods as well. Beneprotein is a protein powder that the hospital serves with every meal. It is available on Amazon.

We like smoothies. You can add fruit and nuts to the smoothie which will be chopped up and blended in. Even spinach, carrots, and other veggies can be blended in.

CountryGal, you've received excellent suggestions, including those that touch on dysphagia.    But there's a valuable medical step that probably should be taken first.     Since you haven't mentioned it, I'm assume it hasn't been taken.   I apologize if you already have this information, though.

I assume that a medical person advised you to prepare soft foods?  If so, was a suggestion made for a videoscopic swallowing test?    In my experience, this is done routinely when someone has difficulty swallowing, in order to determine what the cause is, and prescribe the appropriate diet.

It's not an invasive procedure, but needs to be conducted by a speech pathologist, using hospital or lab equipment.    The patient is given various foods of various consistency, all of which are monitored remotely through a machine which allows the pathologist to determine which might be swallowed and which might be aspirated.   

A modified diet is then prescribed; there are different levels.  As someone wrote, there are mechanical soft and pureed categories.  I received several page printouts with very specific guidelines on what can and can't be eaten.  And it's quite surprising; foods that would seem to be appropriate aren't. 

The diet will also address whether liquids need to be thickened; this is important, as in some cases straws cannot be used, and water or other fluids absolutely need to be thickened to avoid aspiration.

Ice cream is a good example; b/c it's soft, it would seem to fit into a dysphagia diet.  Not so with all pureed foods.  It melts too quickly, becomes liquid, and can be aspirated.

I tricked it by giving my father a few teaspoonfuls of ice cream at a time so he could eat it when it still had some solidity.  As soon as it melted, it was ver boten.   And obviously, any ice cream should not contain nuts, chocolate chunks, cherries, or other foods that require chewing.

And you're right; it's not very appetizing.    I did some research, called food companies, and ordered brochures, some of which used techniques to present the food in a more appealing fashion.     Still, my father wasn't particularly excited by pureed foods.

Has mom been evaluated for dysphagia? She needs to be evaluated to see if her problem is chewing with dentures, swallowing, choking on different thicknesses...

The dietician/therapist can recommend foods, diets and products that can help.

I've been giving my dad Nutrigrain bars. They are soft and he loves the flavors. They aren't exactly cookies, nor are they straight health food.

My grandfather had throat and stomach cancer and puréed all his normal foods in a blender. Worked for him