Meal

August 9, 2010

Hot Pockets

It is true that the easiest way to lower your sodium is to cut out the prepared, packaged items from your diet. But it is false that home-cooked meals, made from scratch, have to be costly, time-consuming, and exhausting to create. Now, I’m not saying your assumption is wrong, because many dishes, like making your own mole sauce, could put you into an ingredient-induced coma for weeks. But thanks to inventions like the slow cooker and immersion blender, you can make flavorful, low sodium meals in the time it takes to order a pizza. For this particular story, let’s just […]

July 30, 2010

Salt-Free My Recipe: Peanut Sauce Pasta

Drumroll please. Today is the first user-submitted Salt-Free My Recipe. And isn’t it a beauty! The original dish, sent in by the wonderful CFoung, includes only one ingredient that this sodium girl can’t have: Jade Sichuan Peanut Sauce. But it is this nutty, spicy, creamy condiment that is the true star, if not the heart and soul, of the dish. Which poses a perfect low sodium challenge. Without the Sichuan Peanut Sauce, you are left with a somewhat boring and sauce-less stir fry. So it was time to put on my cooking cap and come up with a mind-blowing low […]

June 30, 2010

Biting Mr. Bittman: Succotash in Disguise

It’s officially summer! And between a few warm afternoons in San Francisco (made even more spectacular by parades and baseball games) and now the sweltering heat of the New York City streets (yes, I’ve left the best coast for the east for a quick work/pleasure getaway), I’m slapping on sunscreen, putting on my jumper, and soaking in all that this season has to offer–which above all else includes perfectly ripe, summertime produce. Two of the poster children for this season’s pantheon of vegetables include corn (yum) and summer squash (yummer). And when you put them together, you have a dish […]

June 23, 2010

Creamy Chicken Curry

Pack your knives and hop into your time machine, because we are heading back to 2008. It’s time for another installment of the Biting Mr. Bittman, series and today we take a recipe from Mark’s Diner’s Journal column, in which he remixes an Indian classic – Creamy Chicken Curry. Before I launch into the recipe for this dish, I will take a second to add a small disclaimer: I’ve only eaten real chicken curry once before in my life, and that was almost eight years ago after a few bottles of beer (I was in Europe, so it was legal). So, I […]

June 17, 2010

Low-Sodium Yakisoba

For the second installment of the new, Biting Mr. Bittman series, I figured I should stop fooling around, take a big risk, and attack a recipe that relies heavily on salt. You know, just in case Mr. Bittman is actually reading this blog–good morning, Mark!–and wants some proof that this Sodium Girl really knows how to cook everything, without salt. So I scoured his recent recipes for a true challenge–searching for a dish that usually comes in a take-out box and that uses a lot of soy sauce–basically, something of Asian origin. And after sifting through asparagus pesto and laid-back […]

June 1, 2010

Hot Potato

There are two things for which I always have an appetite: 1) crispy, fried potatoes and 2) my future mother-in-law’s curry chicken salad. So when food52.com posted their most recent challenge for the “best potato salad,” I knew exactly what I wanted to make: a Low Sodium, Hot Potato Salad with Curry Dressing. Since the potatoes are the true star of this dish, I decided to give them some extra special care by cooking them twice – first, a quick boil to soften them and second, a long roast in the oven to give them crunch. As for the other […]

May 5, 2010

Spring Fling

Monday night, SF Tao of Pao, the ladies from Farm & a Frying Pan, and I gathered together for our third installment of our blogger dinner. The theme this evening was “Spring” and the F & FP gals imagined a beautiful menu, consisting of pea risotto, oven baked asparagus, and some iteration of berry cobbler. As the email exchanges flew and logistics were made, I found myself to be the last to respond and suddenly (cue dissonant chord) I was the one in charge of the desert. Dessert means baking. Baking means exact measurements and exact ingredients. And that means […]

April 23, 2010

It's a Cracker, Jack

I’ve always been quite jealous, when watching TV cooking shows, to see chefs quickly whip up crispy, parmesan wafers, that add an inexplicable flare and crunch to even the most boring dishes. Like a Caesar salad. All it takes is a grater, a block of parm, and a non-stick baking sheet. But due to parmesan’s high sodium content, to make and enjoy this treat also requires a body that is not salt sensitive. So parmesan wafers were out. But as usual, when I’m told no, I become even more obstinate and determined to find a solution. It just so happened […]

April 15, 2010

The First Supper

After five days of the pre-surgery, liquid-only meal plan, I was finally allowed to dig into something hearty that did not come served in a mug. I love you broth, but it was time to move on. Since I was still in recovery mode, my first meal out of the gate had to be something mild and delicate. Nothing with too much fiber or spice. But bland just isn’t in my vocabulary. So, even though the recipe I had in mind was somewhat colorless, I wanted to make sure it still had flavor. In the fridge, I had some leftover […]

April 9, 2010

Pack Up Your Picnic

As we head into the weekend – that is hopefully filled with sunshine and lawn games – I wanted to sign off with a perfect picnic recipe for curried chicken salad. There is something about the cool temperature of the chicken mixed with the flavorful heat of the curry that screams summer. Or at least whispers spring. And what really makes this dish a favorite is the balance between the creamy mayo and other crisp ingredients. But mayonnaise, the key ingredient, usually hovers around 100mg of sodium per tablespoon, and this recipe often doesn’t make the low sodium cut. Boy’s […]

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