Not giving up on trying to eat local...

Tonight I decided to email Kerbey Lane requesting Nutritional Information... thinking positively...

Hamburger buns

I would have never thought I could get excited over something like hamburger buns but believe me, with the amount of sodium found in almost any type of bread products - I am! I found this at Sun Harvest South...

Crumb-Castle Spelt Breads = the best part is their organic bakery products are made locally in Austin by Apple Annies

So, give their hamburger buns a try, they are not only delicious, their sodium content is AMAZINGLY low!!!

New challenges & adventures

To make cornbread with regular baking powder was not a good choice as the sodium content for just 1 teaspoon was almost 500 mg. Looking locally proved unsuccessful but on-line I found this great product:

Hain Pure Foods Featherweight Baking Powder: Sodium Free/Gluten Free

So, using a crock pot we made pinto beans using HEB's stewed tomatoes/no sodium (which still has 70 mg sodium per can) along with several spices: cumin, garlic powder and pepper. Using the sodium free baking powder, a piece of cornbread ended up at like 19 mg per serving (sodium was from 1 cup milk/100 mg and egg beaters for 1 egg/115 mg).

Even through dinner was a great success, this makes me tired... I just never knew sodium was in SO many things...

The journey is the reward. Chinese Proverb

Eliminating salt has definitely transitioned us into a new lifestyle of not eating out and since cooking has not been anywhere on my daily list of activities for many years, my sister sent me the following cookbooks that now live on my counter:

The No-Salt Cookbook / David C. Anderson & Thomas D. Anderson
Low-Salt Cookbook / American Heart Association
The Everything Low-Salt Cookbook / Pamela Rice Hahn

Plus she came and stocked my kitchen with lots of spices which have never been staples in my house obviously.

A new adventure.

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. John Lennon.

Who would think there would be this big difference in sodium in basic things such as mustard and mayo? The low-fat mayo being like 3 times the amount of sodium than the original?? Amazing. I've also learned that there's a wide span for the amount of sodium in just basic frozen vegetables and also frozen seafood. The HEB brand is actually the lowest. So when you have the exact same vegetables in the bag, why would anyone choose the one with the most salt?

Now before anything makes it into the cart -- the label gets read and compared with similar products.

I wish it was only this easy in going out to eat at local restaurants. I've run into dead ends in my on-line search for nutritional information. Plus I've not received any response my initial emails and admit I'm really disappointed. I need to find time to reach out again to additional places such as Eastside Cafe and Mother's Cafe.

Life is so different now... to protect my husband's health it is a must that we think about sodium before eating anything.

Honestly, I miss being able to just go out to eat to wherever we felt like eating... I know he does too.

So, that said... I'm not giving up on raising awareness on the importance of having this extremely important information available. I mean really, everyone needs to be more aware of what's in the food they eat and feed to their children and families.

Buy local groceries: fresher & healthier

Even buying bread has taken a different slant as the sodium content varies tremendously. Multiply that times two for a sandwich and it can be 400-500 mg which translates to about 1/4 of my husband's daily limit of 2000 mg.

Shopping today at Sun Harvest I checked in with their bakery about their fresh bread. The Large Six Grain is only 105 mg per slice... much lower than every one of the commercial brands. So not only is the bakery bread healthier, it hasn't been on a truck for who knows how many hours/days before you ever buy it.

*** Just another reason to buy local ***