4/5/24 New Meals?

     I've never been one to keep a salt shaker at the table, I always thought the flavor of the meat should come through, but apparently, I don't know what I was talking about.  Since actively trying to reduce sodium, I am discovering some foods aren't even interesting to eat.  Wife made a crock pot of beans over the weekend, but without salt, it was like a pasty mulch.  She had her little hunk of pork she usually throws in there, but it is full of sodium and then she did not flavor it as normal, and I could not find enough interest to even finish the bowl I served myself.  I have to say it was the same for the meat we grilled for Easter Sunday.  We had fajitas, chicken and a couple of random small packs of beef with rib bones (Wife went shopping, so she bought different stuff than I would).  Normally, Mijo and I fight over the chunks of fajita meat even before we serve our plates, but this time he even said "if this is what we're eating, I think I'll just stay in the dorms on the weekends."

    Enter Wife and her "Can Do Attitude", she has been mixing different spices to try to make the meals still good enough to eat and she has impressed me twice now.  We had burgers on Tuesday, and she was mixing 4-5 different bottles of spices, but the end result was pretty freaking great, after eating through the lame BBQ meat.  I think it helped that the patties were a little burned, the crispness added to the flavor.  I then ate the patties on one piece of bread at 120 mg of sodium each and one slice of cheddar cheese, another 140 mg of sodium.  So with the two burger patties, I still say I stayed under 800 mg of sodium.  I ate it with a side of salad, if a bunch of spinach leaves counts as a salad.  I noticed I wasn't drained of energy the next day too, which I barely had any energy on Monday and Tuesday, I just wanted to sleep.

    Last night, we ate chicken, it just went from frozen to made crispy in the oven with whatever magic she put on it, but I was worried she had said F it and loaded it with salt, but she said she used that Nusalt, the sodium substitute, and it really added flavor, although she said she had to go heavy handed on it.  A light sprinkle is not enough.  I was worried my blood pressure would show some trickery afoot, but I was pleasantly surprised.  My bp that night was 119/75 and this morning it was 134/81, which is probably better than when I started the chemo drugs.  

    I'm even excited about the sirloin we are trying tonight, who knows, maybe she releases her own low sodium line of spices.  With meat that good, I don't even mind the side of veggies I am now consuming regularly.