Trying to find things to eat on a low sodium, low fat, low carb diet is expensive and time consuming (unless one wants to eat oatmeal three times a day). I have been so careful lately that now I am getting too little of everything and was lightheaded this morning. I was proud of keeping my levels of sodium, calories, carbs, etc. at almost half of what is recommended daily for a normal person, but apparently too little can be as bad as too much. I am trying to find a balance. I do eat oatmeal almost every morning and that is getting to be pretty dull and boring. So today I remembered that my father likes to put diced apples in his cereal and thought that would be good to add to my oatmeal. Instant oatmeal is sold in the apple cinnamon flavor, but there is a lot of sodium added that I can't have. So, I decided to make my own. I diced up an apple and mixed it in with the oats before cooking and the apple cooked along with the oats and acted like a natural sweetener! I added a little cinnamon on top and it was very tasty!
The past few days I have been looking for recipes online and found several good websites so copied down some recipes and ingredients that I would need. My husband and I went to the grocery store yesterday and ended up spending another small fortune on fresh produce, a couple packages of meat, cans of no-salt-added tomato sauce and stewed tomatoes, dried beans and spices and things that I have been trying to buy gradually.
Today I decided to make a beef stew from a recipe I found at mrsdash.com. If I had followed the recipe, we would have had enough stew for a meal or two for the both of us, but instead I deviated from the recipe and browned a pound of diced beef stew meat, and then added carrots, celery, onion, red potatoes (skins on), green beans, peas, garlic, diced green pepper, whole crushed tomatoes, and spinach. To this I added low sodium vegetable stock and a couple of tablespoons of Mrs. Dash's garlic and herb spice. It didn't look like enough liquid so I added two more cans of low sodium chicken stock. It filled over half of my huge stock pot. I simmered the soup/stew for about four hours. It was delicious! But there was so much of it!
It seems that am still in the mode of cooking for a family of five, and there is only the two of us now. We now have soup to feed five families. I could just feed it to him for the next week and not have to cook...tempting :-) Or I could freeze half of it and heat it up for a meal in a hurry. Nah...I hate cooking. :-D
2 comments:
Hi Stardust,
I can certainly relate to the low fat, low sodium part of your diet. I have been on those two since the beginning of the year for weight loss and to reduce my blood pressure without medication (it's working)and have had to remodel my favorite recipes. It's not easy to go both low-sodium and low-fat at the same time. I like to put a small box (.5 oz.) of raisins in my oatmeal and I also add a teaspoon of cinnamon (for blood pressure) and a tablespoon of flaxseed meal before I put it in the boiling water. I just learned yesterday that the glycemic index of old-fashioned oatmeal is lower than that of the instant, so I may start cooking it 6 minutes longer.
ProfBush
http://profbush.blogspot.com
joel, thanks for stopping by and reading and commenting!
Thanks also for the pointers. I didn't know that there was than much difference between quick-cook oats and old-fashioned. I think I will give the old-fashioned a try. So cinnamon is good for blood pressure? I didn't know that either. What does the flaxseed meal do?
I have never thought about food so much in my life!
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