Over the Salt

Mindful choices for healthy and low sodium cooking

Tag Archives: low salt diet


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Making fluffy scones

2016-04-16 18.27.09I’ve been playing around with the recipe for the past couple of months. Lately, what I’m making is more like fluffy biscuits than scones. They’re light, tall, and more like muffins than those hard flat rock-like things. I’ve been adding eggs, fruit and juice, sometimes leftover jam (well I never eat the last third of a jar of jam, so may as well do something with it) and various spices.

Basic recipe

  • 3 cups flour
    (or gluten free substitute – don’t forget to add xanthan gum if you go this route)
  • 2/3 of a cup of sugar-like substance
    (baking sugar, brown sugar, date sugar, xylitol)
  • 2 teaspoons baking powder
  • 1 1/2 sticks butter (melted)
  • 2 eggs
  • lemon crystals
    (makes all the flavors better)
  • 1/2 cup liquid of some kind
    (milk, juice, rice milk)

Cooking

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees
Put parchment paper on the cookie tray

Preparation

  • The key is to avoid overworking the dough
    Combine the dry ingredients and any fruit
    Melt the butter, pour it in and squish it around with your hands to coat all the flour and make crumbles
  • Add the eggs and whatever liquid you’re using
  • Add more flour if you need to just adhere all the ingredients into a ball of dough
  • Flatten on a flour coated board
  • Cut out with a cookie cutter
  • Handle as little as possible
  • Arrange on the tray and put in oven on a top shelf for 19 minutes

Variations

  • Blueberry + White Chocolate
    Add a pint of blueberries and a cup of white chocolate chips to the dry mix
  • Peach and Orange/Ginger
    Add a cup of diced peaches + ginger / orange powder (teaspoon)
  • Curry Cheddar
    Add 2 cups shredded cheese + teaspoon curry powder to dry mix
  • Dried Fruit
    Add a cup of dried fruit (diced apricot, raisons, apples etc) to dry mix

2014-10-25 16.39.32.jpg

 


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Cooking with low salt

I’ve learned a bunch of things in the past year about reducing or eliminating salt from our diet. Most of the heavy work was right at the beginning, where I read the ingredients on every can, jar, package and bottle of food in the house. I was so surprised to find how much sodium and potassium were in almost everything. And if it had low salt, then the sugar and fat were higher than usual. Through a process of elimination, and re-learning to cook with raw ingredients, we were able to keep the salt minimal, and well within the impossible-sounding 1500 mg a day we were presented with at first. Nowadays, it is a rare thing indeed for Raven to exceed 1000 mg a day, and my own salt intake is around 1500 most days.

We had been reading cans for a while (for sugar content), but had missed the sodium as a health risk. Now we are shopping in the produce rows at the grocery store, for the most part, and cautiously adding other “safe” foods along the way. The amount of processed food has gone down so much, we are losing pounds effortlessly without feeling like it is any kind of diet.

It does take practice, and mindful attention, but I have to say it is worth it. My sweetie is taking the heart meds and diuretics (which helps) and has dropped 60 pounds now. For me, just following along and eating the same food has dropped 45 pounds. That’s like a small person. It certainly leads to more energy to do the things we want to do, and playing with recipes has been a whole lot of fun.

Have been collecting recipes and photos along the way, and the next little while will see me posting a bunch of vege bakes, fabulous potato dishes, and quick ways to make caramelized onions. Hope you are enjoying our journey as much as we are – R


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Golden nectar fruit cake

GoldenNectar-RiaLoader

I have been learning to bake, one step at a time. My approach is to master a single recipe, then try variations on that one with other ingredients, calling my sister in Australia for midnight inspiration as often as not. For the holidays, I wanted to make a fruitcake like I remembered from childhood, but without the bits I didn’t like, such as peel, cherries and nuts. Of course, I called my sister to get a recipe, and some suggestions on how to experiment, as she’s my inspiration for such things. She suggested I start with the Divine Date Loaf recipe, soak a bunch of raisins, sultanas, currants and diced apricots in alcohol, and add them until the batter couldn’t coat any more fruit. This sounded good to me, and I proceeded to experiment from there.

Variations on Divine Date Loaf

  • Substitute gluten free flour for plain flour
  • Use barley malt syrup instead of molasses
  • Add a cup of honey for sweetness
  • Soak about 3 cups chopped sultanas, raisins, apricots,
    currants in 1 cup rum + 1 cup brandy for 3 days, stirring each day.
    Add cup of honey, lemon crystals or zest to this mix.
  • Cook at lower temperature (300 instead of 375 degrees) for 40 minutes
  • Stand small loaf pans in water bath to prevent burning
  • At the 30 minute mark, turn off heat and put aluminum foil on top of pans (prevents burning)

I made 4 mini loafs and a bunch of muffins in large silicon muffin moulds. It was golden, delicious and like nectar. Mmmmmm.


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Healthy Mexican burritos

My sweetie was telling me how he’s been reading restaurant sites to find the nutrition information. He was looking for Mexican food, something that he’s not been able to eat lately, due to the high salt. Can you hear the quest music in the background? I could. I was on a mission for the weekend to find low salt alternatives so we could make our own Mexican food.

making a skinny burrito - photos by Ria Loader

Skinny burrito – photos and collage by Ria Loader


The key elements were soft tortillas, fajita mix – peppers and onions, salsa with cilantro, refried black beans with low everything (fat, salt, additives), and fresh avacado. How hard could it be? I found most of the ingredients at Central Market, a great local place near our house. They make their own tortillas there, and I found an alternate that was pre-packaged. Some salt (about 180 per tortilla), but acceptable. Father’s day was coming up, so their kitchen had made fresh salsa. Don’t worry, we also came up with a no salt recipe. The beans came from a can, low fat, and only 300mg for a half-cup of beans. As we’d be using much less than that for a serving – more like 2 tablespoons, we’re looking at 100mg there. The whole meal came to 400mg of salt, well within the once-a-day-with-salt-meal-allowance. I will write a separate post on how much is too much salt. For now, let’s go with the daily amount of up to 1500-2000mg (or less than a teaspoon) of salt.

Tortillas
Your local market may have a low-salt variety.
Most have up to 200mg
Think about using corn ones if you are gluten sensitive

Fajita Mix
Sliced red onions
Sliced mixed red, yellow, green peppers
Fry in a skillet with olive oil until cooked and a little blackened

Black Beans
Easy to heat in a microwave or small saucepan
No additions unless you like extra spice

Salsa
Fresh tomatoes (1 cup chopped)
Fine chop fresh sweet onions (1 cup)
Cilantro to taste
Variation: Add mango, peaches or pineapple for some zing

Avacado or Guacamole
Use fresh slices of avacado (half an avacado per burrito)
Variation: Your favorite guacamole recipe
(we’ll have one later)

Making the skinny burrito
Cook the beans and the fajita mix, set aside
Heat the tortillas in a skillet, or microwave (dampen paper towel over the plate, heat for 10 seconds)
Assemble the contents in the center of the tortilla
Add shredded cheese
Roll the tortilla up and enjoy!

Variations
You can add rice, chicken, cooked meat, shrimp to the mix to make it a regular burrito

This experiment tasted amazing! I made up an extra one, put it in a gallon baggy, and nuked it for 30 seconds at work the next day. It was just as delicious a day later, and much more convenient than the mystery food at the cafeteria. Let me know if you try it out, and what you think.


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Over the Salt

Salt in various forms - image by frenchbyte from morguefile.comLet’s face it. There is too much salt in canned food, packaged food, and snacks. Gone are the days when salt was a rare condiment, when sitting “above the salt” indicated wealth or prestige. Now we’re in a world where salt is used as a preservative as much as a flavor enhancer. Sometimes, the amount of salt in recipes is too much for good health. Nowadays, I use much less salt in cooking, and when I do use it, I do so mindfully.

When my spouse had heart failure a few months back, a low salt diet became necessary for his recovery. Otherwise, he would have too much fluid build up in his body and lungs, and that would be what I’d call a very bad thing. When I took a look at the pantry, almost all the food had to go. Soups? Out. Frozen dinners? Gone. Breads? Only a few brands would work. Mystery food from restaurants? Gone forever. Needless to say, this prompted a re-evaluation of what constituted health food. It also meant an urgent call to my sister, Colleen, to provide recipe help. As a chef, I was sure she would have the scoop on approaches to take. I also asked my extended social networks, in person and online for suggestions.

I experimented with sauces, spices and snacks made from fresh ingredients. By reading all the labels, it was even possible to find brands that were okay to use as part of recipes. When my sister came to visit for a few weeks from Sydney this spring, we had a lot of fun finding recipes that could work as-is or be adapted. We’ve decided to share those here, and continue experimenting together as a Sydney to Seattle collaboration. We hope that others will join us in trying low salt, savory dishes that taste delicious.