As for the "diet," lets just say that a low-sodium diet is not as easy as I thought! Mostly because I'm a salt-o-holic! I'd take a bag of chips over a sweet treat any day! Which inevitably lead to the need (along with the serious, life-altering heart condition) for the low-sodium diet! For the most part, it's not the worst TASTING diet, I will admit to that. After the first week you get used to how the food is actually supposed to taste and you start to use other spices instead of just heaping on the salt and it actually makes you more daring in the kitchen. Plus, it makes you hyper-aware of just how salty some foods are made, especially at fast food joints and other restaurants. For instance, the Hubbs and I went out on a "date" (baby Sophia crashed, but she literally crashed halfway through so it turned out to still be quite nice) to Genghis Grill the other day, and for those of you who don't know, I'll explain: you are given a bowl by your waitress and you go up to a buffet with all raw ingredients. You pick your protein (beef, pork, chicken, shrimp, crab, tofu...etc) then you pick your veggies (broccoli, zucchini and squash, spinach and so many more I can't even remember) and you pick a seasoning and sauce. By not ADDING anything that had salt in the title or salt by itself, I managed to keep the dish from being overly salty. Still probably in all too much sodium to qualify as a good meal for my specific requirements but I was still quite proud and, most importantly, satisfied. So that's my general rule of thumb, just don't ADD any additional salt to anything I make and to get the lower and reduced sodium ingredients when available. Rinsing any canned veggies or beans that I use also cuts the sodium content in those ingredients.
My family also has a running tradition to get together and have breakfast once a week. Usually this consists of breakfast burritos but during my last pregnancy I had gestational diabetes so we branched out a bit to find some healthier breakfast bites. And since the G.D. went away after Sophia was born, we have stuck pretty well to having a healthier option available at MOST of our breakfasts. This past week was probably one of the best recipes we have had yet. My good friend in Utah, Kerry, introduced me to this co-op called Bountiful Baskets. Basically you pay like $15 and you get a laundry basket full of fresh produce, 50% veggies and 50% fruits. This past week we got mangoes in our basket. None of us have used mangoes on a regular basis....or ever, really, so we were looking for yummy recipes to use them in. We ran across this recipe from Pinterest:
http://www.twopeasandtheirpod.com/strawberry-mango-jicama-salad-recipe/
It was fantastic! We didn't add the cilantro because we aren't huge fans, however we did add a touch of chili powder. I was skeptical at this, but the chili brought out the sweetness in all of the fruits (if jicama is a fruit??) and made it quite delightful.
So that has been one thing keeping me from loosing my mind while I'm stuck being useless for the next 4 weeks. We'll be making a quinoa mac & cheese soon that seems interesting! I'm hoping my picky eaters (David and Penny) will at least give it a shot.
As for those crazy kiddos, they're wonderful!! Sophia had her first illness; she had double ear infections and RSV, which was super scary. Mostly just because we had to give her breathing treatments, which I didn't handle (emotionally) very well. I've gotten a pretty good poker face for all scary "mommy" things, or at least I hope I have. But luckily she didn't develop croup or pneumonia and made quite an amazing recovery. Thank GOODNESS!
Today has been a wonderfully miserable weather day and, as most moms know, this weather is like Ambien to kids so it's been AWESOME! We're gonna sit down to a warm cup of something now!
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