What's for supper?

[MomoMcSleepy]

Tonight I made turkey meatloaf with green and red peppers chopped up inside, and pork rinds instead of  bread crumbs (my husband's on Atkins).  I also made a garlic asparagus puree.  Original recipe calls for broccoli, but the broccoli I had in the fridge was spoiled.  Pretty soupy puree, but delicioso!  I used butter and half-and half, but you might be able to use olive oil instead.  I don't know about half and half, though.  The puree replaces potatoes, and I tell you, it did sort of taste like mashed potatoes!. Turkey was a bit soupy so I cooked it almost an hour at 350.  Should have used more pork rinds...

I am having renal potatoes at Easter, though!  Excited!  I am also making broccoli puree for the hubs, per his request.

[Restorer]

I made roasted chicken wings with a Korean-inspired sauce/glaze. Ginger, garlic, soy sauce, sugar, sriracha, sesame oil, and Korean red pepper paste. I also had quickly sauteed snow peas and some quick sweet cucumber pickles.

I mixed custard for French toast in the morning.

[Jean]

I so wish I could tolerate green red or yellow peppers, it looks like they add so much flavor to different dishes. Just cant stand the smell or the taste of them tho.

[mcclane]

bought these beef soup bones 2 weeks ago and stuck them in the freezer.  I usually buy beef soup bones to make beef stock.  Turns out those beef bones were prime rib bones, with plenty of meat still on the bones.

So I made the stock, grabbed all the meat off the bones, and made home made beef vegetable soup, all for under $5 !! 

[Jean]

Getting a bargain like that always makes me happy. And every time we have steak, the leftovers always go into a soup. Oh, for dinner today, home made split pea soup. ( Please dont throw anything at me )

[Restorer]

*throws ham bones at Jean* Make me some! 

Man, I miss split pea soup. Oh well, I'm cheating tomorrow just before dialysis and having a breakfast burrito with potatoes.

[Riverwhispering]

Restorer have you tried using braggs amino acids in place of Soy sauce?  The Renal dietitian was the one that mentioned it to me and I found it to work well with a lot less sodium then the low sodium soy sauce. 
 

[Riverwhispering]

Just a thought.... Restorer you should share some of your recipes because they sound great.

[mcclane]

Getting a bargain like that always makes me happy. And every time we have steak, the leftovers always go into a soup. Oh, for dinner today, home made split pea soup. ( Please dont throw anything at me )

whenever we have steak for dinner, there is never any leftovers 

I used to bbq steaks, but since buying a cast iron skillet, I find cooking on the iron skillet makes the steaks taste a whole lot better and cooks much faster than using the bbq.

[cassandra]

MMMmm great, good idea, I'm making split-pea soup tomorrow. Today I made a lime cheesecake, and a cheesesandwich with a couple of binders

xx Cas

[Restorer]

Restorer have you tried using braggs amino acids in place of Soy sauce?  The Renal dietitian was the one that mentioned it to me and I found it to work well with a lot less sodium then the low sodium soy sauce.

Is there a low-sodium kind of Bragg's Aminos? Because I'm looking at the nutritional facts, and it looks like it has more sodium than even regular Kikkoman soy sauce. Notice that the serving size of Bragg's Liquid Aminos is 1/2 teaspoon (2.5 ml), and the serving size of Kikkoman soy sauce is 1 tablespoon (15 ml).

Bragg's:


Regular Kikkoman:


Low-sodium Kikkoman:


When you compare them teaspoon to teaspoon, Bragg's has 320 mg of sodium, and low-sodium Kikkoman has 192 mg of sodium. That makes me really wary, because they say that they don't add any salt - it's just soybeans and water. So if they're concentrating that much salt out of soybeans, I'm afraid to think about what else they're concentrating - how much potassium might be in a teaspoonful.

I prefer low sodium soy sauce, though I've been using regular soy sauce because my roommate uses it faster than me, has gone through all the low-sodium soy sauce I bought, and replaced it with a jug of regular. 

Just a thought.... Restorer you should share some of your recipes because they sound great.

Thanks!  I usually don't follow a recipe unless I'm making something for the first time or I'm baking. I tend to just mix things together until they taste right - but I can always reverse-engineer a recipe to share once I'm done!

[Jean]

Restorer, I know you are a pro at this stuff, so tell me, would spaghetti and meatballs be at least somewhat better for us if you made the meatballs out of ground turkey and ground pork mixed together than just useing ground beef??

[Restorer]

Restorer, I know you are a pro at this stuff, so tell me, would spaghetti and meatballs be at least somewhat better for us if you made the meatballs out of ground turkey and ground pork mixed together than just useing ground beef??

Better in what way? Strictly in terms of the renal diet, no, all three of those meats have roughly equivalent phosphorus, potassium, and protein levels - unless you use extra lean ground beef, which is higher in all three.

[Riverwhispering]

Restorer I would love for you to go to Spokane and have a good talk with the renal dietitian I had to see.  It cost me a lot of money to see her since I don't have insurance yet and she was the one that told me to use the Braggs Liquid Aminos instead of soy sauce. 

Would you consider being my personal renal dietitian for free maybe?  You have really helped me learn a lot on the diet part of CKD. 

Also one last request... can you share what ingredients you use for your Asian sauces you make?

[Restorer]

Hah! I'm not certified to be called a renal dietitian, and if I were, I certainly wouldn't do it for free! 

I make a lot of sauces, and I rarely measure anything, so I can really only give rough guidelines. If I'm making stir-fry, I'll mix soy sauce, sugar, sake or Chinese cooking wine, chicken stock if I have some on hand, and sesame oil. Sometimes I'll add a little balsamic vinegar. You have to mix and adjust and taste and adjust more until it tastes right. I also mix a little corn starch and cold water, and dump that in the pan after I've added the sauce, to thicken it.

When I make cold tofu, I mix soy sauce, dark soy sauce, sugar, balsamic vinegar, sesame oil, and sometimes chopped garlic and Korean red pepper flakes. I pour it over a third of a block of silken tofu, and top it with sliced green onions and sesame seeds.

If I want to make a spicy sauce for something, I'll use some combination of the usual things, and mix in some gochujang, Korean red pepper paste.

I'm really not that great with sauces for cooking with. I do better with dipping sauces or dressings.

[Jean]

That'sokayRestorer. As far as I am concerned,any man who knows which end of the spoon to stick into the soup is a great cook, LOL

[conchman]

Me thinks Restorer needs to open a Renal Restaurant...

[MomoMcSleepy]

Restorer, do we know if a salt substitute is used in the  low-sodium soy sauce, cause that might have a lot of potassium?  I always get nervous cause they don't have to put potassium on the label.

[Restorer]

Restorer, do we know if a salt substitute is used in the  low-sodium soy sauce, cause that might have a lot of potassium?  I always get nervous cause they don't have to put potassium on the label.

I haven't seen a brand of low-sodium soy sauce with potassium-based salt substitute in it. They tend to use lactic acid or sometimes acetic acid as "salt enhancers" - makes the salt taste saltier, without adding more sodium or potassium.

If you look on the label at the ingredients, potassium chloride is the dangerous salt substitute. If it's not on there, it's not in it.

[MomoMcSleepy]

Why, thank you for that response!  I will look for that.

[Restorer]

I splurged tonight and cooked a $13 dry-aged ribeye (the smallest one in the case, still half a pound!), roasted some asparagus, and made a cucumber-shallot-mint relish to go with it. Very tasty, but I'll probably be paying for it by Thursday morning.

[Jean]

WHAT??? You paid $26.00 a pound for a ribeye steak?

[cassandra]

couldn't be bothered to cook today, so got delishes fish, and chips from Harper's

[mcclane]

made some fried chicken the other nite, for the breading I got it from paula deen, which is super simple, flour, salt, pepper, and garlic powder.  I double dipped the chicken and deep fried in a cast iron pot.  Turned out beautifully, nice golden brown and very crunchy breading.  I overcooked the chicken so it wasn't as moist as it could have been.

[Restorer]

WHAT??? You paid $26.00 a pound for a ribeye steak?

Yep! 

Well, $23/lb - it was slightly over half a pound. It was local and dry-aged, and it was really good. It's the most I've ever paid for a raw steak.