July 23-28, 2003 posts
May. 12th, 2007 09:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bunrabMonday, July 28, 2003
I was 99% finished with a long post about beta-blockers, when Windows decided to crash. I am too lazy to re-do the entire post right now; I'll get back to it tomorrow. Sorry 'bout that.
Oh yeah, vegetable broth - easiest way to make your own is to buy a can of no-salt-added Veg-All, pour it in liquid and all, and liquify it in the blender or food processor, then pour it through a strainer into a container, to filter out the largest of the remaining vegetable bits. Add water or carrot juice, to make 2 cups, then pour it into ice cube trays, so that you can store it for months and use 4 cubes at a time, as needed, to add to soup, stew, rice, etc.
Oh yeah, vegetable broth - easiest way to make your own is to buy a can of no-salt-added Veg-All, pour it in liquid and all, and liquify it in the blender or food processor, then pour it through a strainer into a container, to filter out the largest of the remaining vegetable bits. Add water or carrot juice, to make 2 cups, then pour it into ice cube trays, so that you can store it for months and use 4 cubes at a time, as needed, to add to soup, stew, rice, etc.
Saturday, July 26, 2003
We're having people over for supper, and it's my turn to cook. Here's what I'm making:
Chicken and Rice
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast pieces (you can use turkey instead, if you want - turkey is slightly lower in sodium than chicken see nutrition database)
1 cup uncooked brown rice
minced garlic or onion, to taste (a tablespoon or so)
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth (Use broth powder; you can also use vegetable broth, or mushroom juice or carrot juice - a vegetable flavor goes quite well with this.)
1 can ready-to-heat low-sodium cream of mushroom soup
1 small can no-salt-added mushrooms
pepper to taste, salt substitute to taste
Check the brown rice package to see how much liquid they say to use for cooking 1 cup of rice. Mix your cream of mushroom soup and your chicken broth together in a large measuring cup, then add water until you have 1/4 cup more liquid altogether than the rice package says.
Flour and then brown the chicken pieces in olive oil. Put the rice, pepper, garlic, and a dash of salt substitute into a casserole dish that has a cover. Pour the can of mushrooms, liquid and all, over that. Put the chicken pieces on top, pour the soup/broth mix over it, and dot the tops of the chicken pieces with little slivers of unsalted butter.
Cover the casserole dish, and bake at 350 degrees F for 1 hour.
You can add some more seasoning if you like; you know me, I throw a tablespoonful of Italian seasoning into almost anything. You could also try a couple teaspoons curry powder (without salt) and a handful of slivered almonds, for "instant Indian food."
Gotta go - kitchen awaits.
Chicken and Rice
2 lbs boneless, skinless chicken breast pieces (you can use turkey instead, if you want - turkey is slightly lower in sodium than chicken see nutrition database)
1 cup uncooked brown rice
minced garlic or onion, to taste (a tablespoon or so)
1 cup low-sodium chicken broth (Use broth powder; you can also use vegetable broth, or mushroom juice or carrot juice - a vegetable flavor goes quite well with this.)
1 can ready-to-heat low-sodium cream of mushroom soup
1 small can no-salt-added mushrooms
pepper to taste, salt substitute to taste
Check the brown rice package to see how much liquid they say to use for cooking 1 cup of rice. Mix your cream of mushroom soup and your chicken broth together in a large measuring cup, then add water until you have 1/4 cup more liquid altogether than the rice package says.
Flour and then brown the chicken pieces in olive oil. Put the rice, pepper, garlic, and a dash of salt substitute into a casserole dish that has a cover. Pour the can of mushrooms, liquid and all, over that. Put the chicken pieces on top, pour the soup/broth mix over it, and dot the tops of the chicken pieces with little slivers of unsalted butter.
Cover the casserole dish, and bake at 350 degrees F for 1 hour.
You can add some more seasoning if you like; you know me, I throw a tablespoonful of Italian seasoning into almost anything. You could also try a couple teaspoons curry powder (without salt) and a handful of slivered almonds, for "instant Indian food."
Gotta go - kitchen awaits.
Thursday, July 24, 2003
You really have to watch out, even when reading labels, for wildly varying sodium counts. For example, I bought a box of a noodle dish; the sodium content per serving was labeled as, I kid you not, 0.6 mg, 0% of daily value - and yet salt was listed in the ingredients, and not as the last item, either! I suspect that there was a translation error somewhere (the product was made and packaged in Spain), and that this is really 0.6 grams, or 600 milligrams; the 0% DV is because having entered the 0.6mg, of course whatever program spits these things out is going to calculate that as 0% of 2000 mg per day. So do a reality check when you're reading - if you see salt or sodium in the ingredients, yet the label shows -0- mg, question it!
Likewise, counts can vary wildly even among similar products. Bremner's low-sodium table crackers: a 15 gram serving has 10 mg sodium. Breton's reduced-sodium whole-wheat table crackers, a 13-mg serving has 70 mg. Others are in between. And club soda or seltzer - certain big-name brands say "low-sodium" on their label - which is nominally true, since there's less than 130 mg - but have 30, 40 or even 60 mg of sodium per cup, while other brands that make very little fuss on their labels, such as Canfield's, have -0- sodium. Canfield's also makes a famous diet chocolate soda. I can't seem to locate a web page for Canfield's, though. Ask your grocer.
Diet soda - remember that saccharine is sodium saccharine; look for other sweeteners instead. Hansen's brand diet sodas have no sodium (I'm drinking diet Black Cherry flavor right now). Locally, I can buy Hansen's at quite a few places, including Whole Foods. Whole Foods carries a lot of organic brands of food, too, including Eden and Westbrae, both of which make many no-salt-added canned goods. I also shop at Central Market, a local chain of only a few stores, owned by HEB, a regional supermarket chain operating mainly in Texas. Central Market is the place to buy sodium-free, fat-free sorbet in a zillion flavors; last time I was browsing through their frozen stuff, they had pints of flower-flavored sorbet, as well as apricot, three kinds of chocolate sorbet, mango, pear & cinnamon, and such things as passion fruit. I'll admit, despite my love of fruit in general, I don't like passion fruit and guava. I guess they're acquired tastes. Anyway, I've found that the HEB chain is fairly responsive to customer input, and one can get them to order brands one likes with only a little bit of nagging.
Oh, and some really egregious sodium manipulation: spaghetti sauce is notoriously high in sodium, right? So I usually wind up ordering it from Healthy Heart Market (see link at right). But Spousal Unit was browsing the supermarket shelves a few months ago, and spotted a spaghetti sauce that claimed to have only 80 mg of sodium per serving. We brought it home- then noticed that the serving size given was **two tablespoons**!!! Most spaghetti sauces give their serving size as 1/4 cup, which is 12 tablespoons for those wondering. Who the heck would use only 2 tablespoons of spaghetti sauce??? Heck, even 1/4 cup is a bit scant for me - I like a little spaghetti with my sauce, you see.
So read every bit of those labels, people- don't just glance at the sodium line and assume that what's listed there accurately reflects normal use of the product!
Likewise, counts can vary wildly even among similar products. Bremner's low-sodium table crackers: a 15 gram serving has 10 mg sodium. Breton's reduced-sodium whole-wheat table crackers, a 13-mg serving has 70 mg. Others are in between. And club soda or seltzer - certain big-name brands say "low-sodium" on their label - which is nominally true, since there's less than 130 mg - but have 30, 40 or even 60 mg of sodium per cup, while other brands that make very little fuss on their labels, such as Canfield's, have -0- sodium. Canfield's also makes a famous diet chocolate soda. I can't seem to locate a web page for Canfield's, though. Ask your grocer.
Diet soda - remember that saccharine is sodium saccharine; look for other sweeteners instead. Hansen's brand diet sodas have no sodium (I'm drinking diet Black Cherry flavor right now). Locally, I can buy Hansen's at quite a few places, including Whole Foods. Whole Foods carries a lot of organic brands of food, too, including Eden and Westbrae, both of which make many no-salt-added canned goods. I also shop at Central Market, a local chain of only a few stores, owned by HEB, a regional supermarket chain operating mainly in Texas. Central Market is the place to buy sodium-free, fat-free sorbet in a zillion flavors; last time I was browsing through their frozen stuff, they had pints of flower-flavored sorbet, as well as apricot, three kinds of chocolate sorbet, mango, pear & cinnamon, and such things as passion fruit. I'll admit, despite my love of fruit in general, I don't like passion fruit and guava. I guess they're acquired tastes. Anyway, I've found that the HEB chain is fairly responsive to customer input, and one can get them to order brands one likes with only a little bit of nagging.
Oh, and some really egregious sodium manipulation: spaghetti sauce is notoriously high in sodium, right? So I usually wind up ordering it from Healthy Heart Market (see link at right). But Spousal Unit was browsing the supermarket shelves a few months ago, and spotted a spaghetti sauce that claimed to have only 80 mg of sodium per serving. We brought it home- then noticed that the serving size given was **two tablespoons**!!! Most spaghetti sauces give their serving size as 1/4 cup, which is 12 tablespoons for those wondering. Who the heck would use only 2 tablespoons of spaghetti sauce??? Heck, even 1/4 cup is a bit scant for me - I like a little spaghetti with my sauce, you see.
So read every bit of those labels, people- don't just glance at the sodium line and assume that what's listed there accurately reflects normal use of the product!
Wednesday, July 23, 2003
Today it almost rained here; it did rain southwest of us, but here it was just overcast. The cloud cover was enough, however, to lower the 5:00 p.m. temperature to under 80 degrees. Five is the hottest time of day here, having to do with our latitude, our position with respect to the edges of our time zone, and daylight savings time. Anyway, it was positively pleasant to ride to school; with the 35-mph wind-chill factor on the bike, it was almost cool enough for a long-sleeved shirt. Not quite, though. And it won't stay like that long enough to actually make me feel better - it's going to be 98 degrees tomorrow, according to weather.com. Oh well. The class I teach Wednesday nights is "Quantitative Applications Software" - essentially, Excel basic-intermediate-advanced smushed into one semester, for the business majors - who will, after all, be using Excel or something much like it for the rest of their working lives. Unfortunately, the students in this class are doing pretty well; I say unfortunately, because I had a great extra credit project in mind if someone needed to do one. I was going to have them compile a list of nutritional data from various supermarket items into an Excel database, then use various pivot-table and filtering techniques to show me reports about sodium content. I figured if three people needed extra credit, one would get to find 30 canned-food items, one 30 frozen items, and one 30 dairy items, and then I'd have the beginnings of a nice list of stuff to buy or to avoid. Well, maybe next semester. I think it is a good project for them, even if I do have an ulterior motive! Better yet, have them go search on the Web and find nutritional data from, say, five different restaurants, for six entrees at each, and compile that into a database. If sometime during the fall you suddenly see a nice list here, you'll know that one of my fall semester students needed some extra credit!
