Food & Eating on a Restricted Sodium Diet

I want to mention two grocery items I found lately that are super low in sodium, in case there are some folks reading me who want or need to lower their intake of that yummy but possibly unhealthy food.

I found this brand of salad dressing....

Braswell's brand of dressing.  This particular one is a peach vinaigrette.
It only has 30 mg sodium(compared to the 250 or much more in other commercial dressings).
The herb vinaigrette variety has only 100 mg as well. 
This peach flavor goes well with greens and nuts, not so good if you add tomato to your salad.
It's not cheap at $3.99 a bottle but it's been on sale at Weis(Poundmeintheass)Markets lately for $2.99(not on sale this week).  It comes in a reusable glass carafe....very convenient for your summer wine soirees. ;-)

I know I can probably makes this cheaper myself(I buy bulk bags of frozen peach slices at the restaurant supply store, so the cost of the fruit is lower than paying $3 or more for a 1lb. bag in the grocery store), but it's good to have on hand for those days when you don't have the time or energy to make 6 or so items from scratch because you can't have the commercially prepared equivalent anymore.

I also found a partial answer to my cheese dilemma.....I LOVE cheese, but it's basically all sodium, even fake cheese has tons of sodium in it.
HeluvaGood is my new "besty".....

They make a reduced sodium cheddar cheese.
25 mg per 2 oz. serving.
I found the only place around here that carries it is Wegman's.  It's $2.49 an 8 oz. package.
Now I say this is a PARTIAL solution for two reasons.

1-They only make this reduced sodium cheese in a cheddar variety.  Cheddar cheese is a very small part of the Fromage Universe and being restricted to 1 type of cheese for life chaps my butt.
But at least there IS some cheese I can have in quantity.

2-It tastes terrible.  Ok....maybe not terrible but it's not as good as cheddar cheese make with salt.
It's terrible as an "let's have cheese on crackers" cheese, but it's good as a "melted in a sandwich or in a casserole" cheese.  It just doesn't have much flavor at all.  And I am telling you this as someone who's palate is use to not having salt and finding flavor in bland food now.
Mostly I'll probably be using this WITH a real cheese, to extend the amount I can have but have the flavor of reg. cheddar, on days when I have seriously restricted all other sodium consumed so I have lots of room left in my sodium allotment.

I did use this reduced sodium cheese thusly a couple of weeks back.
Weis(PMITA)Markets had Cubanelle peppers on sale for $1.29 lb.  I bought some and made Chile Rellenos one night for dinner.
Though I have enjoyed this dish in restaurants before, I had never made this myself before and was a bit intimidated.
It really wasn't too bad but it was difficult as you need to be quick once you get the egg whites whipped up.
Here are the peppers once I had put them to char on the grill and then sweat in a plastic bag.....

I should have charred them more as the skins would have been easier to pull off.   But luckily the skins of cubanelle peppers aren't as tough as poblano peppers so the dish was still edible.
I did the traditional frying of the egg white batter dipped peppers(the most difficult part was coating the peppers) but next time I'll try baking them instead.  I stuffed my pepper with my special RS cheese but still put some reg. Monterey jack cheese on top when I baked them off in the casserole dish.  It was enough to give it cheese flavor but not so much that I went over my sodium limit for the day.

Sorry I forgot to snap a photo of the finish dish, but trust me, everyone ate them right up! lol

Last week I had a 2lb. bag of large shrimp(21-30 ct. I think?) I wanted to use.
Not wanting to go the battered and fried route, I tired grilling them on skewers.  I went searching online for a honey garlic sauce recipe.
Found one and then did my monkeying around with it to make it almost sodium-free but still tasty.
Let the shrimp skewers marinate for an hour before I threw them on the grill and used a can of coconut milk to make coconut rice to go along with the shrimp.
Then I thickened the marinade with cornstarch and served the resulting sauce over the shrimp.
Hubs & I agreed that the sauce tasted just like the Garlic Sauce they put on Eggplant at our favorite Chinese restaurant!
I could have sworn I snapped a picture of the finished dish but can't seem to find it in my files....

The sauce was so good, I used leftover sauce to form the base of a new batch of sauce last Saturday and made Garlic Chicken and Broccoli over leftover Coconut Rice.  I also added water chestnuts to give the dish a little crunch....

"Good enough to eat" close-up.....

I'm so spiffy, the dish coordinates with my dinnerware colors! lol
We have 2 servings of this dish left so it will be on the menu either tonight or tomorrow as it's too hot to cook here the next couple of days.

If anyone would like my reduced-sodium Honey Garlic marinade and sauce recipe, just give out a holler and I'll post it.

I'm off to another dr. appt. in a bit here....oh goody!

Sluggy

Non-Stop Toilet Cleaning

Hubs and I are going into the Designer Hotel business.

HERE

It needs work but it's a steal!
Look at the trim work inside on that staircase.
The only draw back is the number of toilets.
I just wish I could talk him into it.

He wants to leave his job soooo badly and doesn't want to wait the few years he needs to stay before he retires from there.

I told him he can leave now, we can fix this up and run it.
After a few years, when it's a going operation, we can hire a manager to run it, and then sit back and count the profits.

That's what childhood friends of Hubs did when they retired as teachers.  They bought a B&B in the Berkshires, eventually hired a manager, retiring from the B&B biz and had a passive income stream.

I guess I'll have to save this idea for my second husband...... ;-)

Sluggy

 

Bluegrass Banjo

Let's get in touch with our inner hillbilly today.
This is for you Linda.

 

Sluggy

Just For Laughs

One of the fine moments of an underrated film.....
 

Sluggy

VITALCHEK-Scam Artists Who can Kiss My Ass

If you do genealogy I sure hope you NEVER have to obtain documentation/vital records from a large city!
You will, without a doubt be driven crazy by it.

My father was born in NYC.  I sent away through VITALCHEK online for his birth certificate back in February.
Paid a whopping $38.30 for it.
And then I sat and waited.....and waited.....then waited some more.

The Vitalchek website showed no information(the status of my request)for a month.
I got busy with other things and just refound, last week, my receipt for the order I made.....3 full months since the request.
I have heard not one peep nor gotten anything in the mail in all this time from either Vitalchek or NYC.

So I went back to the Vitalchek  website and there is a message that they can't show any information on my purchase/request after 45 days(for MY privacy...yah, riiight!)and I have to call them for information.
So I call and basically they tell me I have to call the NYC Dept. of Health and Mental Hygiene directly now to inquire on the status of the request.
They further said they show that the request was received on Feb. 27th by the NYC H&MH and there is no evidence that anything was ever mailed out.

Oh goody!

So  I call the number the gal gives me and it's not the Dept. of H&MH but a 311 information line for NYC govt....like parking rules today, when is the next garbage pick-up....that sort of thing.
So I hang on the line what seemed like an hour before I got a live person....a live person who spoke too fast and with a heavy accent.
I couldn't make out anything they said except they will transfer me to the Dept. of H&MH.
And I sat on hold some more.....

FINALLY got someone at the actual agency I needed to contact. 
After taking every piece of information from me short of when my last bowel movement was, she tells me that the order was CANCELLED....cancelled back on Feb. 27th!!!
Well, THANKS for not letting me know that for 3 months!
Damn government.....

She says all birth certificate requests have to be done in person or via snail mail with a physical application.  Since my father is dead I also need a certified copy of his death certificate with the application.
So now I have to go to Virginia and pay $12 to get that. (Yah, I can snail mail andapplication but that will be another 4 weeks or more and I've already waited 3 months for this stuff!)

Then I can send it all into NYC and wait the devil knows how long!

Oh, and the $30 I paid NYC for the birth cert. and shipping?
They still have it.
The gal at the Dept. of H&MH said I could expect a refund in the mail in 6-8 weeks from when the application was cancelled.
After a long pause on my end, while I waited for her to realize the lunacy of what she just told me, I reminded her that my application was cancelled Feb. 27th and it was now May 28th, so the 6-8 week time frame had long passed.
She then, put in a request for my refund so we shall see how long(or if EVER)it takes to actually see my money again.

And somebody needs to tell VITALCHEK-who can now officially KMFA!-that they shouldn't allow consumers to request birth certificates online to certain places without other documentation first.....and in some states can't EVER request a cert. online.
They are scamming people out of a fee of $8.30 to do NOTHING!!!

JERKS....

More on this saga is and when it develops.
Off to take my lunch time blood pressure pill....

Sluggy