I have been very blessed over the past few years, and my symptoms have been quite controlled. Now though, they are back. I know I have been terrible about my diet and need to get back into the swing of things. I have a very busy family- 5 daughters, and we are often on the go. What is your best advice for cooking for a family, grabbing a fast snack, shopping, etc.? Any advice is appreciated. Thanks!
Read labels for sodium content, there can be a vast difference in the amount of sodium in different brands of the same item. Keep cut up fruit and veggies in the refrigerator for snacking, perhaps with a low sodium dip. If you are planning on eating out check out the restarant website for nutritional content so you have a good idea ahead of time what will fit into your diet. I know it's a lot of extra work and takes planning but if it helps the MM it's all worth it.
Can you cook excess when you have time, freeze excess? Then, nuke the frozen meal when you don't have time to cook. I don't snack so I can't offer any advice there, sorry other than I've heard frozen grapes are really good in the summer.
Well, that's a tough one because eating low sodium means that you cook everything from scratch and so time is something you will need to find. There's nothing fast about cooking all meals at home. My helpers are a crock pot, two pressure cookers and a salad spinner The salad spinner takes care of salads, baby spinach or any other greens we eat raw. Wash, spin to remove as much moisture as possible and store in the refrigerator. The crock pot will cook your lunch if you leave it overnight or dinner if you let it go during the day. Pressure cookers reduce cooking time of whole chickens, meats, beans, soups, rice, to a fraction. They save me a lot of cooking time in the kitchen. I don't use a microwave so we eat leftovers a lot and avoid the freezing issue. You can dress up leftovers in so many ways that they become new meals. Shopping? I can tell you what we do but it may not work for you. I buy single food items i.e. beans from the bulk bin, brown Basmati rice, poultry (and other meats), fish, loads of fruits and vegetables, eggs, different types of squash and then prepare dishes. You can roast chicken or turkey breast after seasoning it with various spices and herbs, then cut the slices real thin and use that instead of deli meat. When you buy single food items, you don't have to worry about reading labels or wondering whether meals will have too much sodium. We use fresh or dried herbs, dried spices and those don't have excessive amounts of sodium. There are many brands of very low sodium tomato sauce, for example that you can use if you eat pasta or just to cook. Bread can be made at home in a bread maker. I don't eat bread so it's not an issue for me. I guess what I am saying is that you will need to start eating "real" food so you can track your sodium intake and it will be a healthy change for you and for your family. Nothing tastes better than home cooked meals, IMO. It may sound daunting but it's really not.
Oh and you can make your own chicken/beef/fish broths at home too. Those can be frozen in glass containers or those little ice-cube trays. That way, you have broth when you need it. That's what I do anyway and it works well.
Grab a snack = fresh whole fruit like apples, bananas, oranges in a bowl on the kitchen table. Otherwise shop the perimeter of the grocery store and teach those girls to cook! Make it a fun thing and do as above poster suggested and cook in quantity and make your own tv dinners to reheat. They will be much healthier not just for you but for the kids. They will learn a lot of useful skills from measuring and fractions and decimals to co operation, creativity and how to stretch or waste a dollar from their experience. Let them do some of the crative parts like menu planning, shopping, and seasoning ( hold the salt ) not just the drudgery of washing dishes. They will learn life long skills in cooking as well as nutrition and be way ahead of their peers. That builds confidence. This can still be done in the modern era. Then next summer .... A little kitchen garden! With everyone working you can have a good time and make quick work of it. Good source for salt free spices is trader joe's and pennzey's spices.
I'm not into salt or baked product substitutes. This has been hard for me because I love my food seasoned. Love soy sauce/tamari sauce, sushi, chips and salsa. Wahhh!. But my daughter has an allergy to certain artificial preservatives so I already cooked a lot from scratch. But we have a busy life. I've got some quick go to things I can throw in my bag...homemade granola bars which have 40 mg sodium, apples, unsalted nuts with a few unsalted pretzels, low sodium cheese sticks (found them at walmart)... and I actually downloaded the nutritional charts to my phone for McDs, Burger King, and Chick fil a so if I do take the kids there I can choose the best thing for me if i have no other options. I also found that my favorite local burger place doesn't season the meat (plus they use real meat...haha). A burger with a tomato a drop of mayo and one pickle chopped up is really good, especially with a few unsalted fries. And including the bun keeps me pretty low sodium considering its fast food. I've been searching for a good lower sodium pancake recipe. And I think I've found one. Not no sodium but low sodium... gonna try it this weekend. I bought all broths, canned beans and canned tomatoes at Whole Foods because you can get no sodium added which was even lower in sodium than the low sodium ones at the regular grocery store. I'm brand new to this so I'm still working it out.
Oh and I forgot to mention that my husband and I own a bottled food products company (sauces amd salsas) so I'm forever calculating nutritional values and thinking about this stuff anyway. Our #1 product has too much sodium for me to have more tham a tbsp. But our mild salsa is actually low sodium (120 mg) and I found these amazing no salt added chips that are so good and crunchy. This week I made homemade shrimp tacos (corn tortillas...the soft kind.. are very low sodium) with spanish rice and my whole meal came in under 300 mg salt which is low considering what I was eating.I didn't use as much shrimp in mine and loaded up on the avacado and and other veggies.
Another thing is, it is important to keep the sodium even throughout the day, so dont Save up your sodium mgs all day to have one big splurge at dinner. That defeats the purpose.
