Meal Planning Again with Changes

I am trying to get back into meal plan mode here.
I still have to cook for the family but I can't always have what they are having, even with adaptations.
Since I don't feel like making 2 meals those nights, I'll probably just have something easy, like a sandwich or fruit with yogurt, etc.

The local restaurant supply store had a great sale on colored peppers over the weekend.....99¢ lb.
I bought a ton, along with zucchini and yellow squash for the same price.  This menu is loaded with peppers and what's leftover is getting sliced into strips and frozen for later use.

Here's the meal plan--

Sunday, I adapted my Lena's Lemon Chicken recipe so I could eat it.  Instead of using half the "cheap" Lemon Pepper seasoning(that's mostly SALT  lol), and half the salt-free Lemon Pepper seasoning, I just used the salt-free variety.  I use to half and half it because we like some salt and the salt-free variety is insanely expensive, and it calls for a large amount for the recipe.  All thee other ingredients are aok to have--chicken, brown rice(not salted when cooking), onions, zucchini, olive oil, garlic, diced tomatoes and tomato paste.

Monday, I made Macaroni Salad(minus the salt)and really loaded it up with carrots, celery, onions, 3 colors of peppers and black olives.  It was more a Veggie Salad really. lol
We had hamburgers(they had cheese, I didn't).  I had one of my half turkey/half beef burgers.  We also had a mélange of steamed corn, broccoli and carrots.

Tuesday, only Hubs and I were home for dinner.  He had a Chicken Enchilada.  I made 8 Enchiladas last week, without salt or refried beans and using my made from scratch enchilada sauce(salt-free).
I froze half of them for easy dinners with the container of leftover sauce in the fridge.  Hubs also ate leftover Macaroni Salad.
I didn't feel like a heavy meal so I just had apple slices dipped in my peanut butter.

Wednesday, tonight will be Italian Sausage, Onion and Peppers Sandwiches. I can't have the sausage so I'll figure something else out later today.  I have baby Portabella mushrooms here I have to use, so I'll think up something using those.  Maybe a bowl of fresh mushroom soup?

Thursday, we'll have Chicken Fajitas. Peppers, onions, mushrooms and chicken.  I'll make my own seasoning since Chili Powder is full of salt.  And cheese for the family but not on my fajita. 

Friday, Fish, Lena's Cabbage Salad, Yellow Squash Sauté.

Saturday, Either Leftovers or Pasta with meat sauce and a large Salad containing lettuce, carrots, celery, peppers, grape tomatoes, red cabbage and spinach. The sauce will be made from scratch and have half and half ground turkey or chicken and ground beef. I'll use my low salt dressing or olive oil and vinegar.

So that's how we're rolling this week.
Next week?
Who knows!

Sluggy
 

Long but Very Interesting Genealogy Stuff

I recently started helping my Sister-in-Law, my brother's wife, trace her genealogical roots.
She gave me some grandparent and parent info and let me loose to hunt down her family tree.
She had 2 incidental things to tell me, both on her paternal side of things.....one was that she was curious if her father's paternal line led back to English royalty, and the other was whether there was Native American blood somewhere back in her line on her father's maternal side.  She told me of stories that had been passed down telling of one of her great x 2 or 3  grandmothers being Native American by blood.

So I hooked Sis-in-law into the tree and started plugging away.
I knew at the start that the SIL's hopes to being related to Princess Diana was pretty much nil, but her father's paternal line seemed to go back to an American Revolutionary War General/Hero.  But upon further investigation, some of the dates/names didn't match up, so I cut it lose and decided to concentrate instead on the father's line which led to the Native American great grandmother stories.

With the help of Censuses and birth records I was able to make a clear trace back to her 3 x Great Grandparents, Cornwallis(or Wallis as he was known) Twiford and Nancy Payne(or Paine) Twiford.  I found evidence of a few other oral histories, from other descendants of this line, talking about Nancy being Native American.
The story goes that Wallis was married previously with 3 children when an epidemic of some sort took his wife and children before 1830.  Wallis wanted a new wife and found Nancy sitting under a tree, fell in love and took her home to be his bride.  Nancy was said to be "mean as a snake" and not a very good housekeeper.  Wallis & Nancy went on to have 8 children.
I even found a picture of Nancy online.....

She sure looks like a dour old thing to me. ;-)



While I have hard records going forward for this line, there is little documentation pre Nancy.  There are census records for 1790 so her father is known but beyond that, no one has substantiated much yet.
I don't have any "hard" documentation at this point for the Native American angle yet, just the stories.  Proving the oral tradition correct may take much effort, research and time, even if it is true, and at this point I don't have the time or knowledge to follow this trail any further back.


And just when I was about to close this effort down and try some other branches, the story got a whole lot more interesting.

You see, these ancestors of my SIL lived their lives on the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  The county was Tyrrell County, NC until the eastern chunk of the county was separated and made a county all it's own called Dare County in 1870. The Alligator River basically was used as the dividing line between the two counties.  This area includes the Outer Banks barrier Islands(including Hatteras Island), the island of Roanoke(which is located due west of the barrier islands, in the Croatan Sound), and the lands due west of the mainland, which the Alligator River bisects.  Nowadays, most of these lands are National Wildlife Refuges.

If you haven't guessed where I was going with this yet, here it is.
Everyone has heard about the mystery of the "Lost Colony".  The English colony founded on Roanoke Island where the colonists all disappeared and it's some bigtime mystery about what happened to them all.
Yah.
That's what the people who make a living off of keeping the fate of the colonists a mystery want you to believe.   


Some background before we move on and a little accurate history in the clip.





So the 4th Voyage was the one carrying the settlers/planters now known as the Lost Colony.
Gov. John White left in 1587 for England to obtain more supplies for the colony.  The following year in 1588, with only two too small ships, he set off for Roanoke Island.  But the ships Captains bent on plundering enemy vessels attacked some Spanish ships and were themselves captured and their cargo seized.  Without supplies, the ships returned to England for bigger ships and more supplies.

Due to England being at war against Phillip II and the Spanish Armanda, Elizabeth I denied Sir Walter Raleigh and John White's requests for a ship.  There were simply none too spare because of the war.
A vessel was approved in 1590, almost 3 years later.  Gov. John White returned to American with supplies in Aug. of 1590 to the garrison on Roanoke Island.  As everyone knows, no sign of the colonists was found, along with their houses inside the garrison.  There was no evidence the houses had been burned down as you'd expect if the colony had been invaded and destroyed. 
The colonists had been instructed, if there had been a problem or disaster to mark a palisade with a Maltese cross.  It was marked with the name of the nearby Croatoan(Hatteras)Island instead, meaning nothing untoward had happened to the colonists at the settlement.
John White planned to venture down to Croatoan  and the colonists the following day.
However he never made that journey to Hatteras, as a large storm was coming in and the captain of the ship insisted on returning to England immediately.  He refused to wait for Gov. White to go there and return for the supplies once he found the colonists.
John White never returned to the New World.

Over the next two hundred or so years, there are entries from journals and diaries of various English and French explorers to the coastal areas of this part of North Carolina of European Caucasian , reports of peoples living among  the natives, and later of native American inhabitants with fair skin, grey or blue eyes, and even blond hair.  One explorer remarked how he found houses using known European building techniques among the Croatoan, they claimed some of their ancestors had been "White" and they could read and write English.
In later years, one isolated tribe was found to have words that sounded strikingly like obsolete English terms in their vocabulary.

Because of the likelihood that Europeans lived and intermarried with the Native population, a group is currently conducting a DNA Project, using the Surnames of the 150 colonists to investigate these claims that the colonists did not perish at Roanoke Island.
And one of the original colonist surnames is......
John Pain(Payne).
He is possibly the Y-DNA ancestor of Nancy Payne.
If they find a living male Paine descendant of John with maternal Native DNA and paternal European DNA, and he is related directly to my sister-in law's Nancy Payne, this will prove that sis is part Native and a direct descendant of a "Lost Colonist".

A link to this DNA Project on Facebook HERE.


I think this is pretty neat!

Sluggy


 

My Salty Tears of Dispair.....Mmmmm....SALT

So what do my health challenges mean for me?
For now, I am on a low sodium regiment.
Low as in 2,000mg a day......for everything I eat.
That equals to about 1 teaspoon per day.

Oh, how I am going to Enjoy this.
Said. no one. ever.

We are not "salters".....aka people who pour salt on all their food when served.
Yes, I do season with salt during the cooking process and I use fancy pants salts when salt it called for.
Often when we eat out, we notice how salty the food is normally.

I've always been a label reader, but I've always concentrated on the fat and carb content.
The sodium content is a whole other ball of wax as they say! 

A myriad of foods are off limits to me now--

*Anchovies(which I love on occasion on pizza)
*Green Olives(black ones are ok in moderation, not Kalamata  black olives)
*Almost all cheeses  sniff, sniff
*Ketchup
*Chinese food sauces(not so much the food, just the sauces on it)
* Dill Pickles
*Soy Sauce(obviously)
*Bouillon Cubes
*Commercially prepared or cured meats/fish(sausage, bacon, hot dogs, sardines, ham, etc.)
*Worcestershire sauce
*Salty snacks like chips, pretzels, crackers, salted nuts
*Salt of any kind-Iodized, Sea Salt, Kosher, Himalayan, Pink, etc.
*Pizza with meat toppings

That's just the short list.

Last Wednesday was the first day I was able to drive myself somewhere.  As a side note it was so nice to be able to get behind the wheel and not have it too close to my middle! lol

And since we've been subsisting on drips and drabs the Hubs and Daughter have picked up from the store for the last 2 weeks and no real meal plan...at. all., I went out for groceries and to read labels to see what I can find that I won't have to make for myself now.
You know shortcut foods, processed/low sodium foods I can have here to use when I can't possibly make everything from scratch.

I spent 1.5 hours in the store on Wednesday reading labels.  It's a small store with not variety beyond "regular" items, so I came home with only 4 "shortcut foods".....

* No Salt Ketchup
14 oz. for $3.39
5mg sodium per 1 TB serving versus 160mg in reg. ketchup 1 TB serving

Ketchup is the lifeblood of the American diet.
This will help me add a bit of flavor to a dish or make my own healthier version of "processed" foods without the salt.

* Crazy Richard's 100% Natural Peanut Butter
16 oz. for $3.65
0mg sodium per 2 TB serving versus 150mg in reg. PB 2 TB serving
(Skippy makes a 75mg sodium version & Jif an 80mg version.)

Another versatile food, good for cooking and a great protein source on a slice of bread.
While the sodium content is not very high normally, it adds up over the course of a day's worth of eating so best to cut the salt where you can.

* Gazebo Room Lite Greek Salad Dressing and Marinade(made locally)
16 oz. for $3.59
90mg per 1 TB serving versus 140mg Kraft Greek Dressing

While the lower sodium one is still high and 1 TB isn't nearly enough for an entire salad, it was the lowest  salt content dressing on the shelf, even including dry mixes like Good Seasons.
I know.....I checked every blessed  variety/brand and there must have been 120 different dressings on those shelves!
One of the first products I'll be making from scratch will be a healthy salad dressing but I'll keep this for emergencies.

* Bear Naked Granola
12 oz. for $3.00-on sale woot!
l0mg sodium in 1/4 cup serving versus 60mg per serving for Kellog's Granola

Another case of the regular version of the food isn't high but why take in extra sodium when you don't have to?

The take-away from all this?
My grocery bill will be going up.
Better to be paying more at the store now if I can avoid paying enormous amounts to the healthcare system later on.

The American Heart Association says the average American consumes more than 3,000mg of sodium a day and recommends you consume no more than 1,500mg daily.  That's less than one teaspoon. Salt in all forms, especially those hidden in foods(hello processed foods!)can take names other than salt.  When reading labels, look for these salts by any other name......sodium chloride, sodium citrate, disodium phosphate, baking soda and monosodium glutamate.  If the ingredients listed don't include salt but include any of these, it's still got salt in it.


Sluggy

Steve is Having a Bad Day...or Is He?

Stolen Borrowed from my friend Jeff over at the West Virginia Surf Report, here's a video of a woman doing "Man on the Street" interviews.

Watch this and imagine yourself in that woman's place.
Seems "Steve" may have been off his medication that day!
Either that or he just came out of the Hard Rock Café(behind him)after seeing his bill there.....

8-))

**Slight bad language warning**
Please return all beverages to an upright position before viewing....



Sluggy

Saving $ on Clothing a Disgruntled Teen

I don't go shopping often.
When I do it's usually a need.
#2Son was in need of Summer clothes as he's grown out of last years togs.
So unless I want the boy to go nekkid this Summer, yah.....bigger clothes are a need. lol
So Hubs took us down to Kohl's on Saturday with the teen so he could try on shorts and such.

You would have thought I asked the boy to endure hours of torture on the rack!
Take him to a store, buy him stuff(he gets to pick out!)and take him home.  He is so mistreated, isn't he?

After an hour or so of sighing and eye rolls, we left with 4 pairs of Levi and Urban Pipeline shorts, a Vans shirt, a Marc Jacobs shirt and a Rocko's Modern Life t-shirt for the Daughter.
The bill came to $127.
I had a 20% off coupon, which made the bill $105.88.
I used 2 x $50 Kohl's gift cards to pay.....though they weren't "free", I had gotten them at Rite-Aid last year during a +Ups Promo, so they were paid for out of last year's money AND I had gotten $20 in +Up Rewards to spend for $20 worth of free stuff at Rite-Aid last year.
So I ended up paying $5.88 for the 7 items of clothing.

And then, for spending $100, I received a $20 Kohl's cash to use later this month.
So in the end I "spent" $105.88 and got $40 in extra script and 7 items of clothing.

And except for maybe some sandals, I am done spending on teen clothes until Fall.

Always trying to work the angles here, even when hooked up to oxygen and pulling it around behind me in a store.....

Sluggy