BRR! After the absolutely blistering summer we had in Houston, it's so nice to actually have to break out a jacket to go to work in the morning. And let me tell you, the new drop in the mercury has definitely got me thinking soups and stews. Maybe this weekend I'll get adventurous and try making something like that... hmm. Of course supposedly it's going to go back to being in the 80s, so maybe not.
Last night was taco night at the house - especially after we discovered that 3 corn tortilla taco shells only have 135 mg of sodium total (or at least the Old El Paso brand ones do, anyway.)
So on the table last night we had the previously mentioned taco seasoning mix, which was just as good as we remembered. It worked just as well with beef as it did with chicken, even though I got the 73/27 ground beef at the store, forgetting how greasy it was. I don't know if it was just a half-assed job of draining the meat after browning or what, but man that was greasy.
As an aside here, I almost always throw in some Mrs Dash when I'm browning pretty much any kind of meat. The thing I like about that is that there are a million different varieties of it, and as far as I know they're all salt-free. I wouldn't rely just on the taco seasoning afterwards, though I don't know why... but instinct tells me that it would turn out bland. In my completely unprofessional opinion, seasoning while cooking melds the flavors a little better. Add some chopped onion about halfway through browning and yum.
I also made Buffy's Refried Beans again, but this time I tried using 2 tbsp (unsalted) butter and 2 tsp vegetable oil instead of the lard/bacon drippings, and I seasoned it with a sprinkle of the taco seasoning instead of straight cayenne pepper, though I did add a miniscule extra dash of that. I have to admit, I was REALLY thinking it wasn't going to work at first. The beans didn't seem to be absorbing the butter very well and there was this weird kind of butter-and-bean-juice sort of sludge hovering around, but once I added 1/3 cup of chicken broth it finally came together. I reduce the recipe to suit 1 can of pinto beans, since there's just the two of us, but if you're really all about the beans or you have a large family do the 3 cans. It seems like it would be an insane amount of beans but it's actually not - splitting one can in half yields just about enough to fill one of these 6-oz custard cups. In the end, I thought they were every bit as good with a change in seasoning, and using reduced sodium beans and chicken broth didn't seem to alter the flavor at all. I did add a tiny bit of salt, but it was a tiny round perhaps the circumference of a pea in my hand, and it honestly would have done fine without.
I also made Mexican Rice, which Chris said tasted great. (For some reason by the time food was done I just wasn't in a rice mood, and I forgot to taste it anyway.) This time the Kroger brand of tomato sauce won over the Hunt's, despite being much lower sodium - 280 mg in 1/4 cup as opposed to 410 in the same amount of the Hunt's. We tasted both and the latter tasted MUCH too salty to us - so either it's just excessively salty in general, or we're starting to get used to this. As one commenter recommended I softened up the onion in the oil first before I added the rice to brown, and like everyone else my rice didn't even come close to "puffing" while browning. I also added about 1 and 1/2 tsp of the taco seasoning at the end of the browning, just before I added in the chicken broth and tomato paste.
Now with all that chicken broth running around here, this may not really be the lowest sodium thing ever, but that was really the only source of sodium in any of it aside from the tomato paste. Well, and whatever amount of cheese went on the tacos. And the beans. But still it wasn't too bad, and there were no complaints so I think this is going in the save box.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Spaghetti Sauce
This is one that I'm still working on, since I've only made it once. And I'll admit, the first attempt was almost inedible, but I don't think it had much to do with the recipe... but let's start with that!
Spaghetti Sauce Mix. Usually I just use the Lawry's brand seasoning packets when I make spaghetti sauce, but as with everything else, any pre-made packaged mix like that will probably have a lot of salt. In this case, the nutrition facts say a whopping 600 mg per 1.5 tbsp (from here on out I'll try to include the actual listed sodium content with a link when I can, rather than just pulling numbers from memory). I'm not sure if that means cry or prepared - I'm guessing prepared as directed. And when you keep in mind that a general goal for a low-sodium diet is between 1,000 mg and 1,500 mg? That's a LOT of sodium in just a tiny bit of sauce.
When I started comparing tomato paste at the grocery store, I was surprised. The Kroger store brand has 20 mg per 2 tbsp, while the Hunt's has 105 mg for the same amount. Memory failed me here because we'd tried that tomato paste before and hated it, but my hamster-brain forgot and went "oh! this is a GREAT idea!" Yeah, maybe not so much.
I didn't have any Italian seasoning on hand - I considered getting it at the store, but I was already getting about 6 or 7 other various herbs and spices (minced garlic, minced onion, paprika, etc) so I was a little worried about the price. And Italian seasoning is pretty simple anyway - I already have oregano, thyme, basil and rosemary at home so I just tossed some of that into the mix, maybe a tsp each. Except rosemary, since it was incredibly resistant to being ground up in my hand... maybe one of these days I'll splurge and get a mortar and pestle! I'll fully admit that I have this thing about kitchen gadgets. I just love them, even if I have no real use for them, and even when I WOULD use them a lot I sometimes have a hard time actually buying them. So mortar and pestle goes on my wish list, along with a cast iron skillet. And a bigger kitchen.
I think the mix actually would be fine, but the tomato paste completely ruined the sauce. I tasted a tiny bit when I opened the can and immediately halved the amount of sugar that I put in the dry mix, but the sauce still came out too sweet. Not in a sugar way, but in a weird "maybe those tomatoes were a little off" kind of way. Rotten sweet. It took putting mozzarella cheese on it to make it even slightly palatable, and that's not a good solution. So I think next time I'll give this mix another shot but go back to the Hunt's tomato paste instead. It's still a ton less sodium than the Lawry's packet, and that's the important part.
Spaghetti Sauce Mix. Usually I just use the Lawry's brand seasoning packets when I make spaghetti sauce, but as with everything else, any pre-made packaged mix like that will probably have a lot of salt. In this case, the nutrition facts say a whopping 600 mg per 1.5 tbsp (from here on out I'll try to include the actual listed sodium content with a link when I can, rather than just pulling numbers from memory). I'm not sure if that means cry or prepared - I'm guessing prepared as directed. And when you keep in mind that a general goal for a low-sodium diet is between 1,000 mg and 1,500 mg? That's a LOT of sodium in just a tiny bit of sauce.
When I started comparing tomato paste at the grocery store, I was surprised. The Kroger store brand has 20 mg per 2 tbsp, while the Hunt's has 105 mg for the same amount. Memory failed me here because we'd tried that tomato paste before and hated it, but my hamster-brain forgot and went "oh! this is a GREAT idea!" Yeah, maybe not so much.
I didn't have any Italian seasoning on hand - I considered getting it at the store, but I was already getting about 6 or 7 other various herbs and spices (minced garlic, minced onion, paprika, etc) so I was a little worried about the price. And Italian seasoning is pretty simple anyway - I already have oregano, thyme, basil and rosemary at home so I just tossed some of that into the mix, maybe a tsp each. Except rosemary, since it was incredibly resistant to being ground up in my hand... maybe one of these days I'll splurge and get a mortar and pestle! I'll fully admit that I have this thing about kitchen gadgets. I just love them, even if I have no real use for them, and even when I WOULD use them a lot I sometimes have a hard time actually buying them. So mortar and pestle goes on my wish list, along with a cast iron skillet. And a bigger kitchen.
I think the mix actually would be fine, but the tomato paste completely ruined the sauce. I tasted a tiny bit when I opened the can and immediately halved the amount of sugar that I put in the dry mix, but the sauce still came out too sweet. Not in a sugar way, but in a weird "maybe those tomatoes were a little off" kind of way. Rotten sweet. It took putting mozzarella cheese on it to make it even slightly palatable, and that's not a good solution. So I think next time I'll give this mix another shot but go back to the Hunt's tomato paste instead. It's still a ton less sodium than the Lawry's packet, and that's the important part.
Wednesday, October 12, 2011
Pork and Potatoes
It looks like the blood pressure medication and our efforts to cut sodium are starting to pay off! Granted the blood pressure machines at the grocery stores are apparently a little dodgy (potentially ill-fitting cuffs, little calibration or maintenance, etc) but over the course of last night, our brand new home monitor was giving me a reading of about 118/75, and Chris a reading of about 128/80-ish, which is a vast improvement. Granted there's some debate among "experts" over what kind of at-home devices are best, and whether wrist or arm ones are more accurate, blah blah blah, but the point is that the numbers are pretty good.
But on to the cooking - with pictures this time! Sorry, I'm not exactly a pro photographer here, but at least it's an idea of how things should look, more or less.
First, we have Baked Pork Chops. First thing I changed here was the bread crumbs. Even in plain ones there's a lot of sodium, and there's even more in any seasoned ones. So after some debate, I ended up getting a box of Panko to try. They held up pretty well in meatballs, and despite the fact that it was a little more difficult to get them in a good layer on the chops they actually worked pretty well.
The key to this recipe is not to rush the browning part - just a little olive oil and get the breading nice and browned. You're not trying to actually cook the pork chops since they're going in the oven - this is just to set the coating. I always lightly spray the baking dish with a little bit of cooking spray to help the cleanup later. Generally, they look the same after the first hour of baking as they do straight out of the pan:
I'd picked up a can of Campbell's cream of mushroom soup for sodium restricted diets, but as soon as I popped open the can before I put the chops in the oven, I knew i had a problem. For one thing, well... the soup smelled awful. But for another, it was too runny. The soup is the main component in a kind of gravy-ish sauce that tops them, but once you mix in the milk and white wine, it gets kind of runny. I tried mixing it together anyway but it was definitely the wrong consistency, and the wine taste was much too strong. So while the chops were baking I dashed back to the store (no small feat considering that I take the bus) and grabbed two more cans of soup: Campbell's reduced sodium and Kroger brand lower calorie or fat or whatever it is that I've forgotten. It's a fair bit more sodium, but the Kroger brand ended up winning, and it's still less than regular cream of mushroom soup. Top the chops with the soup and bake for another half hour:
The thing to remember here is that you're not going to get a crispy-breaded pork chop out of this. They're going to soak up some of the soup and get soggy, but they taste amazing. But a lot of people reviewing the recipe seemed to want to ding it for being soggy, which makes me wonder if they understand what happens when you put bread in liquid. But those are probably the same ones who claim they made a recipe "exactly as-is, except I changed the spices, used beans instead of corn, and omitted the beef in this steak recipe." You laugh, but people do almost that exact thing.
To go with the pork chops, we obviously needed veggies. Since the frozen mashed potatoes have so much sodium but we still wanted some kind of potato, Chris suggested we try Cowboy Mashed Potatoes. I was a little hesitant at first because of the jalapeno, but it's really nothing to worry about. It wasn't spicy at all, and I have just about the lowest tolerance in the world for spicy stuff.
I used 4 small-ish red potatoes, 4 of the white potatoes that have the same kind of skin as red potatoes (whatever those are, they were just marked "white potatoes" at the store), 1 medium sized jalapeno and about 3/4 of a bag of baby carrots. I cut the potatoes into fairly small chunks, cut the baby carrots into thirds, and cut the jalapeno in half and then in slices. I minced the garlic a little; not too finely because I didn't want it slipping through the colander when it was drained. Once filled with water and on the stove, it looked like this:
Pretty, isn't it? I was a little worried about mashing the chunks of carrot and the corn but it ended up fine. A lot of the carrots stayed more or less together, and the mashed bits probably helped the flavor of the potatoes. I'll admit that I did add a dash of salt, but not as much as I would have before - maybe 1/16th of a teaspoon, if that much. It's a little easier to gauge how much you're using if you sprinkle it into your hand first. Mix in a little cheese and it's done! We decided to top them with some sour cream for flavor but I think they'd be fine without it if that's not your thing, and you could probably add more jalapeno if you prefer spicier food.
And the result? Again, sorry for the lousy picture, I should have turned on the overhead light first:
My only complaint about any of it was that the pork chops didn't re-heat as well as the ones I made with bread crumbs. We had a TON of potatoes left over, easily enough for another meal and probably one more serving after that.
But on to the cooking - with pictures this time! Sorry, I'm not exactly a pro photographer here, but at least it's an idea of how things should look, more or less.
First, we have Baked Pork Chops. First thing I changed here was the bread crumbs. Even in plain ones there's a lot of sodium, and there's even more in any seasoned ones. So after some debate, I ended up getting a box of Panko to try. They held up pretty well in meatballs, and despite the fact that it was a little more difficult to get them in a good layer on the chops they actually worked pretty well.
The key to this recipe is not to rush the browning part - just a little olive oil and get the breading nice and browned. You're not trying to actually cook the pork chops since they're going in the oven - this is just to set the coating. I always lightly spray the baking dish with a little bit of cooking spray to help the cleanup later. Generally, they look the same after the first hour of baking as they do straight out of the pan:
The thing to remember here is that you're not going to get a crispy-breaded pork chop out of this. They're going to soak up some of the soup and get soggy, but they taste amazing. But a lot of people reviewing the recipe seemed to want to ding it for being soggy, which makes me wonder if they understand what happens when you put bread in liquid. But those are probably the same ones who claim they made a recipe "exactly as-is, except I changed the spices, used beans instead of corn, and omitted the beef in this steak recipe." You laugh, but people do almost that exact thing.
To go with the pork chops, we obviously needed veggies. Since the frozen mashed potatoes have so much sodium but we still wanted some kind of potato, Chris suggested we try Cowboy Mashed Potatoes. I was a little hesitant at first because of the jalapeno, but it's really nothing to worry about. It wasn't spicy at all, and I have just about the lowest tolerance in the world for spicy stuff.
I used 4 small-ish red potatoes, 4 of the white potatoes that have the same kind of skin as red potatoes (whatever those are, they were just marked "white potatoes" at the store), 1 medium sized jalapeno and about 3/4 of a bag of baby carrots. I cut the potatoes into fairly small chunks, cut the baby carrots into thirds, and cut the jalapeno in half and then in slices. I minced the garlic a little; not too finely because I didn't want it slipping through the colander when it was drained. Once filled with water and on the stove, it looked like this:
Pretty, isn't it? I was a little worried about mashing the chunks of carrot and the corn but it ended up fine. A lot of the carrots stayed more or less together, and the mashed bits probably helped the flavor of the potatoes. I'll admit that I did add a dash of salt, but not as much as I would have before - maybe 1/16th of a teaspoon, if that much. It's a little easier to gauge how much you're using if you sprinkle it into your hand first. Mix in a little cheese and it's done! We decided to top them with some sour cream for flavor but I think they'd be fine without it if that's not your thing, and you could probably add more jalapeno if you prefer spicier food.
And the result? Again, sorry for the lousy picture, I should have turned on the overhead light first:
My only complaint about any of it was that the pork chops didn't re-heat as well as the ones I made with bread crumbs. We had a TON of potatoes left over, easily enough for another meal and probably one more serving after that.
Monday, October 10, 2011
High blood Pressure is a pain in the ass
Only three entries in and I already failed there for awhile! It's been one of those two weeks - me with a horrible case of being troll-social (talking to people? going anywhere? BAH) and Chris with a raging ear infection. Finally we broke down and went to the Walgreen's clinic to get some antibiotics for that and got a surprise bonus diagnosis - hypertension! When I took my blood pressure at the store while waiting for the prescriptions, I got a shock too - 151 systolic, which is the first number. Which is also classified as Stage 1 Hypertension. Granted that's probably not as accurate as the doctor's office, but accurate enough to worry me.
Now, the thing about both of us is... well, we try to eat healthy. Sometimes. But we both love food, and it definitely shows. Since a trip to the hospital due to a diverticulitis episode two years ago (which involved a week's stay for Chris) we've been a lot better about fiber, but that's about it. The truth is that neither one of us really know a lot about healthy eating. Sure, we know that making our own food is better than pizza and burgers, but the problem comes when we get down to what to actually eat? I come from a family that pretty much only really cooks when they HAVE to and has the disposable income to avoid it a lot of the time, and it was always viewed as a chore rather than an adventure - when I was in high school, I "had" to cook one meal a week. It was always spaghetti, always jarred sauce that I just added some frozen chopped onion and bell pepper to. Not exactly adventurous or healthy, if you've ever really looked at the back of those jars.
So thus begins our new adventure: trying to lower our sodium intake. Did you know that just one teaspoon of salt is your daily recommended value of sodium? (That's 2325 milligrams, for those counting.) And for anyone who's overweight or in the beginning stages of hypertension, and let's face it, that's a lot of us... that's too much sodium. Way too much. But sodium is in everything these days, in various forms. It's even in milk - I think the 1% that I get has 100 mg per 8 ozs. It doesn't seem like a lot but it starts adding up fast.
Now it's all about experimenting. The problem is that a lot of no-salt added things are, well, inedible. Maybe they'd work for you, I don't know, but for us, all of them tend to taste too sweet. Mind you I don't mind sweet, but I mean the sickly kind of sweet, like bread or fruit just on the other side of rotten. We're tried low-sodium bread, no-salt added veggies, lower sodium tomato paste, soup intended for sodium restricted diets, all with the same result. Sure, it's a great way to cut sodium - but only because we can't eat anything made with it. Blech! So now I'm going to start blogging something slightly different than what I'd originally intended: our efforts to slash our salt intake without making food completely unpalatable.
I've actually got pictures for some stuff I made last weekend, but I'll save those for tomorrow. Since I've already rambled extensively, here's a pretty easy one that I made last week: Taco Seasoning. I completely left out the salt and it tasted perfectly fine - just add 2 1/2 tbsp of the seasoning and 3/4 cup water to 1 lb of browned hamburger meat or cubed cooked chicken.
You'll have to check your chili powder to make sure that there's no sodium in it, but this mixture is great. We really couldn't tell much of a difference between this and the store-bought packet, and we saved about 300 mg of sodium per serving by not using that. Low-sodium tortillas are fairly hard to come by so I went for low carb ones instead, which packed a surprising 9g of fiber per tortilla. And at 180 mg of sodium per serving, they weren't a deal breaker. Keep in mind that SOME sodium is good for you - actually, too little is bad as well. A doctor can give you a more definite number as far as a minimum is concerned. One note of warning: if you don't have health insurance, like Chris, the Walgreen's Take Care Clinic is an option, but apparently they're phasing out treatment for high blood pressure. They'll tell you if it's too high, but they won't prescribe medication for it anymore. Fortunately they referred us to a great clinic just across the parking lot, but it still could be bothersome. Also, you can buy blood pressure monitors on Amazon for pretty cheap, so that's another option.
We've only been at this cutting sodium thing a week, and when I re-tested my blood pressure at the grocery store, my systolic was down to 142. Here's to hoping that was a good sign and not just a fluke!
Now, the thing about both of us is... well, we try to eat healthy. Sometimes. But we both love food, and it definitely shows. Since a trip to the hospital due to a diverticulitis episode two years ago (which involved a week's stay for Chris) we've been a lot better about fiber, but that's about it. The truth is that neither one of us really know a lot about healthy eating. Sure, we know that making our own food is better than pizza and burgers, but the problem comes when we get down to what to actually eat? I come from a family that pretty much only really cooks when they HAVE to and has the disposable income to avoid it a lot of the time, and it was always viewed as a chore rather than an adventure - when I was in high school, I "had" to cook one meal a week. It was always spaghetti, always jarred sauce that I just added some frozen chopped onion and bell pepper to. Not exactly adventurous or healthy, if you've ever really looked at the back of those jars.
So thus begins our new adventure: trying to lower our sodium intake. Did you know that just one teaspoon of salt is your daily recommended value of sodium? (That's 2325 milligrams, for those counting.) And for anyone who's overweight or in the beginning stages of hypertension, and let's face it, that's a lot of us... that's too much sodium. Way too much. But sodium is in everything these days, in various forms. It's even in milk - I think the 1% that I get has 100 mg per 8 ozs. It doesn't seem like a lot but it starts adding up fast.
Now it's all about experimenting. The problem is that a lot of no-salt added things are, well, inedible. Maybe they'd work for you, I don't know, but for us, all of them tend to taste too sweet. Mind you I don't mind sweet, but I mean the sickly kind of sweet, like bread or fruit just on the other side of rotten. We're tried low-sodium bread, no-salt added veggies, lower sodium tomato paste, soup intended for sodium restricted diets, all with the same result. Sure, it's a great way to cut sodium - but only because we can't eat anything made with it. Blech! So now I'm going to start blogging something slightly different than what I'd originally intended: our efforts to slash our salt intake without making food completely unpalatable.
I've actually got pictures for some stuff I made last weekend, but I'll save those for tomorrow. Since I've already rambled extensively, here's a pretty easy one that I made last week: Taco Seasoning. I completely left out the salt and it tasted perfectly fine - just add 2 1/2 tbsp of the seasoning and 3/4 cup water to 1 lb of browned hamburger meat or cubed cooked chicken.
You'll have to check your chili powder to make sure that there's no sodium in it, but this mixture is great. We really couldn't tell much of a difference between this and the store-bought packet, and we saved about 300 mg of sodium per serving by not using that. Low-sodium tortillas are fairly hard to come by so I went for low carb ones instead, which packed a surprising 9g of fiber per tortilla. And at 180 mg of sodium per serving, they weren't a deal breaker. Keep in mind that SOME sodium is good for you - actually, too little is bad as well. A doctor can give you a more definite number as far as a minimum is concerned. One note of warning: if you don't have health insurance, like Chris, the Walgreen's Take Care Clinic is an option, but apparently they're phasing out treatment for high blood pressure. They'll tell you if it's too high, but they won't prescribe medication for it anymore. Fortunately they referred us to a great clinic just across the parking lot, but it still could be bothersome. Also, you can buy blood pressure monitors on Amazon for pretty cheap, so that's another option.
We've only been at this cutting sodium thing a week, and when I re-tested my blood pressure at the grocery store, my systolic was down to 142. Here's to hoping that was a good sign and not just a fluke!
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