My, low sodium, take on Cashew Chicken

If there's one drawback to a low sodium lifestyle, it is the ease at which your normal menu rotation gets boring.  Unsalted mashed potatoes just aren't all that tasty no matter how much butter you put in them!  So, I'm having to branch out of my cooking comfort zone.  In the past, home-cooked Chinese-style food was more likely in the form of a can of La Choy.  At over 1500mg of sodium per cup, that is out the window now.  Yesterday morning I was brainstorming dinner and remembered I had 3/4 of a package of thin sliced chicken breasts in the freezer.  I also had most of a pound bag of roasted, unsalted cashews hanging around.  Hmm, could I create some sort of Cashew Chicken?  I googled some recipes and most of them called for crazy amounts of salt, soy sauce and Hoisin sauce.  I was determined I could manage *something* so I got the chicken out to thaw and headed to work.  

As the day progressed, my plan started firming up.  I have the luxury of working in a grocery store so during a spare moment I stopped by the Asian section.  I found Kikkoman's Stir Fry Sauce which has 190mg of sodium per tablespoon.  Not great, but I could work with that.  Then I walked by an endcap of pineapple.  Things in my brain really started bubbling then.  When I got off I grabbed some pineapple tidbits in juice, the stir fry sauce and a few other necessities and hurried home.  

Cinnamon rolls

As promised, the method I use to convert my standard bread recipe to a cinnamon roll recipe.  The bread recipe can be found here:  Low Sodium Bread Recipe  I omit the onion powder then add 1/2 cup sugar for the dough itself.  Once it has risen the first time, I split it into halves.  It makes it easier to work with.  Then I roll that out into a big, thin rectangle.  I smear that all over with a few tablespoons of softened, unsalted butter.  Then sprinkle it with half of the cinnamon filling and roll it up.  Cut the rolled up dough into 1-2 inch slices and place in a well greased baking pan to rise again.  Repeat with the other half of the dough.  Bake at 350 for 25-30 minutes.  Once they have cooled some, glaze with the vanilla icing.  Recipes after the jump. 

Quick and Easy: Bacon Cheeseburgers and Fries

I can hear the skepticism now.  I promise, it is low sodium, easy, tasty and perfect for a quick weeknight dinner.  The cheeseburger part is pretty straightforward.  Pan fry, or grill, the burgers.  I season mine with a liberal sprinkle of Mrs. Dash Table Blend.  Top them with half a slice of cheddar (we like Great Value presliced sharp cheddar at 130mg per slice) and a piece of cooked lower sodium bacon (Oscar Meyer at 80mg per piece).  The buns we buy are 150mg each.  The fries and veggies add about another 50mg of sodium to the meal.  Can it be?  Burgers and fries for under 450mg  of sodium?! 

For me, the fries are the best part of this meal.  Maybe because they taste pretty close to Arby's curly fries, or maybe because they make Bill smile.  Maybe both.  But they sure are good.  Here's how I make them, but remember the measurements are approximate...I'm a dash, dab and sprinkle kind of cook.  Adjust things to your personal tastes...spices and herbs have next to no sodium so experiment away!  Recipe after the jump.

By Bread Alone: A Low Sodium Bread Recipe

Bread, such a basic food staple.  It is cheap, filling and comforting.  Sandwiches are a lunchtime go-to.  A slice of bread easily completes a meal.  Toast with a smear of butter and jam is a breakfast worth smiling over.  What do you do when you realize 2 slices of store bought bread contains nearly a meal's allotment of sodium plus any number of barely pronounceable additives?  You fire up the Kitchen Aid and make your own!  Through trial and error, lots of error, I managed to find a combination of ingredients that produces a loaf, or rolls, that easily rival the softness, squishability and tender crust of that loaf of Bunny Bread I used to buy each week.  The best part?  Each roll or slice has 5 or less mg of sodium and zero laboratory inspired ingredient names!

Take a look at the ingredients in the loaf of bread I used to buy:

I don't know about you, but ingredients that are primarily used for agricultural fertilizers and in such products as Round-Up, make me a wee bit icked out when they show up in my food.  Ammonium Sulfate  All lecturing aside, especially since I'm totally down with eating at McDonald's on occasion, any of us can make a loaf of bread with just a few ingredients and a little patience.  You, and I, will make bricks on occasion.  Don't get discouraged.  Save those for breadcrumbs! 

On to the recipe!  This recipe will make an 8x8 pan of dinner rolls (9-12) plus a small loaf or 8-12 sub rolls. 

Mix the following in a somewhat large bowl, or the bowl of your Kitchen Aid:

1 cup of warm water

2 tsp sugar

2 tsp honey (a good squirt or dollop)

1 packet, or 2.25 tsp of yeast

Let that sit for a few minutes until you see the yeast start to bloom/foam.

Then add the following:

1 cup warm water mixed with 1 T buttermilk powder (or .25 cup buttermilk plus .75 cup warm water)

1 T vinegar

2 T potato flour (or buzz 2 T plain instant potato flakes in a coffee grinder and use that)

2 T olive oil

.25 tsp onion powder

4-6 cups bread flour (add about a cup at a time until the dough looks and feels right)

Mixing is easiest if you use a stand mixer like a Kitchen Aid.  Use the dough hook and let it do the work for you.  Once the dough is cleaning the sides of the bowl, let it work for a few minutes.  Then stop the mixer and check the consistency.  If it is still sticky, add another .5 cup of flour.  Once you are happy with the consistency, let it knead in the mixer for at least 5 minutes.  I prefer my dough a little on the tacky side, but not overly sticky, after it has been beat around in the KA for about 5 minutes.  Unless your KA behaves better than mine, don't get too far away during the kneading time.  Mine tries to walk off the counter!  While it is kneading,  prep a big bowl and a sheet of plastic wrap with some olive oil or Pam.  When the dough is ready, oil your hands and transfer it to the oiled bowl.  Flip it over a time or two so all surfaces have a nice coating of oil then cover with the oiled plastic wrap.  Let it rise until almost doubled...45 minutes to an hour usually.  Then punch it down, shape it how you like and preheat your oven to 375*.  Again, make sure the shaped dough has a decent coating of oil so the surface doesn't dry out and form a crust.  Let it rise again to almost doubled...30-45 minutes usually.  Bake time will depend on what you shaped the dough into.  A pan of rolls will take about 20 minutes.  Sub rolls closer to 30 minutes and a loaf of bread might take 40.  Ovens vary so much that you'd be wise to check on it once you start really smelling that fresh baked bread aroma.  I thump mine and listen for a hollow sound to check for doneness. 

Now comes the hard part.  If you made a loaf of bread, wait until it is totally cooled before you slice into it!  It will keep 3 or 4 days in a ziploc if you do.  Cutting it while it is warm will let all the steam out and stale the bread really quickly.  If you're going to eat it all for dinner tonight, slice on into it, slather it with butter and enjoy!  Up next, I'll be posting how I modify this recipe to make low sodium cinnamon rolls.  I'd love to hear your experiences with bread making...successes and failures!  

Homemade, low sodium pizza

I don't know about any of you, but being able to click my way to Pizzahut.com and 30 minutes later have hot, cheesy, crusty goodness at my door is something I mourn on a weekly basis.  Even making my own pizza is a bit of a challenge.  Cheese carries with it a heavy dose of salt, as does pepperoni, sausage and even store bought pizza sauce.  Since cold pizza for breakfast is one of life's greatest joys, I set out to make a great tasting, low sodium pizza where I didn't miss the salty, greasy, goodness that used to come in a steaming cardboard box.  A single slice of Pizza Hut pepperoni pan crust pizza is over 750mg of sodium...let's see where mine clocks in. 

Any good pizza starts with a good crust.  I won't pretend mine is anywhere near the same as Pizza Hut's, but it is pretty darn good.  You don't even need a Kitchen Aid for this, though it makes life a lot easier. 

Salt Free Pizza Crust:

1/4 cup warm water

2 T sugar (or honey if you prefer)

1 packet dry yeast

Mix the above and let it foam.  Then add in the following:

1 1/2 cups warm water

2 T oil

1/2 tsp onion powder

1/4 tsp garlic powder

1 T vinegar

3-4 cups flour (more or less as needed)

Mix well and either let the KA knead it or knead it by hand for a few minutes.  Let it rise for at least 30 minutes then stretch out on to your pizza pan or cookie sheet.  Leave the edges just a bit thicker than the middle.  Bake the crust by itself for about 10 minutes at 400*.  Then pull it out and top it with homemade pizza sauce (recipe to follow), 8 ounces of fresh mozzarella (the brand I buy is 85mg per ounce) and 15 pieces of lower sodium pepperoni (250mg) plus any veggies or fungi you like.  Bake again for another 10 minutes or until the crust is as browned and the cheese as gooey as you like.  According to my calculations, if you cut the pizza into 8 slices, each slice will have around 120mg of sodium. 

Homemade pizza sauce

1 8oz can no salt added tomato sauce

1 T olive oil

1 T sugar (less if you prefer)

1 tsp garlic powder

1/2 tsp onion powder

1 tsp basil

1/2 tsp oregano

1/4 tsp black pepper

1 T nutritional yeast (optional, but this adds a faux salty taste to my palate)

Mix it all together, adjusting seasonings to your tastes, and let it meld while the dough is rising.  

I dare you to tell me that this looks "low sodium" "bland" or "tasteless!"

How did we end up here?

A question I've asked myself a thousand times.  How on earth did two barely middle-aged (gah, really??  Wasn't I just 23 a few weeks ago??) folks end up here?  Just over a month ago, my husband woke up slurring his words, the left side of his face drooping and his left hand with no grip.  He'd been fighting what we, and his doctor, thought were some nasty seasonal allergies.  How wrong we all were.  A few tests, tears and trembling moments in the ER and we knew our lives were changed forever.  The first blood pressure reading I saw was 191/149.  I'm told it was higher than that the first time they took it.  My big, tough, stoic and nearly unemotional husband asked me to call his mother to come be with him.  How could I blame him?  My first call that morning was to get my mother to come be with me.  I knew in that moment he was as terrified as I was. The words "congestive heart failure" hung in the air like the stench of a freshly manured field. 

It wasn't long at all before our little, local hospital knew he needed more care than they could give him.  They loaded him up in an ambulance for what he calls "the ride that nearly killed me."  The paramedic driving the rig wasted no time getting him to a bigger regional hospital where he received better care than I could have imagined.  His overnight nurse, Jen, was beyond phenomenal.  The rest of the nurses, aides and other caregivers were great too.  But Jen is what every nurse should strive to be.  Smart, honest, approachable, kind, funny and willing to spend the time necessary in explaining all the scary stuff going on.  Jen was the one to really explain all the nitty gritty details of what was going on inside his body.  She hung a bunch of new words in the air:  "transient ischemic attack"  "cardiomyopathy" and a whole bunch of others that are still floating around but haven't sunk in yet.

All of that led to three words that don't get the luxury of just hanging in the air.  "Low sodium diet."  Being the cook of our family, I had to make those words reality right away.  As I thought about my carefully stockpiled cabinets full of canned soups, canned vegetables, dessert mixes and various other items...even the carefully wrapped meat in my freezer, my heart sank in realization that he could eat nearly none of it now.  The more research I did, the more I realized my shopping, cooking, eating and thinking all had to change.  I longed for the luxury of time to process all of this.  I scoured the web looking for websites, blogs, recipes, guidance...anything!  What I did find just was simply lacking to me.  Sure, there are a few really good sites out there.  Megaheart.com is one of the best.  But, everything seemed so geared for folks 20, 30, 40 years older than we are.  It is a very isolating feeling hearing over and over "But he's only FORTY!"  Topping that with some of the crazy ingredients, strange meals and foods that we just would never eat, led me to the creation of this blog. 

My hope is that something I write connects even a little with someone out there feeling lost and alone.  That even one of my recipes finds a home in someone else's kitchen.  That my throw-it-together style of cooking inspires someone else to just wing it in the kitchen.  And, maybe, just maybe I'll make a new online friend or two in this crazy mixed up life.