Recipes
As a little girl my Mother taught me to cook, starting with peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, moving on to heating canned and frozen meals, and then to food from scratch. By age 12 I could make bread or cook Thanksgiving dinner with no assistance. I sometimes wonder if she knew how important it would be for me to have this ability. I know I’m grateful every day that I am able to create meals with or without a recipe from fresh ingredients.
By the fall of 2003 I was chief cook and bottle washer for a 4 generation household. Many might think that the generation gap, or parents living with adult children would be the big hurdles — nope let me tell you it was meal preparation. I had to factor in diabetes (type I & II), coronary artery disease, and high blood pressure; as well as, taking into consideration the tastes and preferences of five people ranging in age from 15 months to 80 years.
In the fall of 2005 my mother became very ill and after several weeks she was diagnosed with pericarditis and congestive heart failure. Our daily intake of sodium went from 1,500-2,000 mg a day to 500-1,000 mg a day. What this means, in terms of meals, is that we eat no prepackaged or pre-prepped foods, and no meals from cans, boxes or bags. There are few trips to restaruants and no nights you just order pizza for fun. But there is good, tasty food on the table every night and I don’t doubt that we are all a little healthier for the change.
Some of the recipes listed below are the direct result of having to cook severely sodium restricted meals (VLS-very low sodium & LS-low sodium), and some are just long time family favorites (FF) filled with as much sodium as the day they were first created.
