Beef Hash

The cream of soups are working great.  I've been using Mocha Mix instead of milk or cream, it's a bit thin but it still works well in the casseroles.  I can't get over how delicious Cream of Celery soup is!  I've only ever used them as sauces and casserole ingredients and I think I've been missing out.  I'll be posting up that recipe too, but tonight I wanted to get how I made Roast Beef Hash written up before I forget how I made it.

This one pushes the Potassium limits a bit, but sometimes you just gotta indulge a little.  We still don't go over the recommended 1500 to 2000 mgs a day.

Roast Beef Hash from left over Pot Roast

Rehydrated boxed shredded hashbrowns - check labels for potassium and sodium, the ones I bought from Costco are pretty low on both
Chopped onion
Left over Gravy with some extra dry beef gravy mix and water added in to make about 2 cups of liquid.
Ground up left over pot roast beef.  I ended up with a whole lot so I cooked up half and froze the rest for another night, or morning, this stuff would be awesome with eggs..
Black Pepper to taste.

Mix all the ingredients together in a large bowl, heat up some olive oil in a cast iron skillet and fry the heck out of it.  I like a good crunchy crust on mine.

I guess I need to put up my no sodium no phosphate gravy mix recipe.  It's a staple around here and is used in almost every thing beefy.

One of the Dad issues is that he thinks he wants to eat way too much protein so I've made up for this by making most of his dinners with only about 3 or 4 oz of high quality protein, i.e. meat/eggs/cheese.  Cheese is difficult to keep at a minimum but it's got some bad salt and potassium numbers in it so we work hard on that one.

Google seems to have taken over all my assorted blogs and hobby webpages so I don't know how to get into them to update.  Blech!!  I am so resisting letting the internet take over all my computer activities, if I wanted them to be linked to a Google account, I'd have added them, now it seems they are trying to take away my free will!!  Ack!  Another Conspiracy Theory LOL!!!  Anyway, because I get asked to share experiences and recipes on this ongoing quest to make palatable food for such a severely restricted diet, I copied some stuff here and will try to be more current with the information.  Chronic Kidney Disease caused by a Diabetic ignoring their food intake requirements is more than just a little challenging,  However, it's not all bad, there is a lot of help online and substituting ingredients can be a lot of work, but in the end, well, hopefully not 'the end' LOL it will be worth it.  Even though he cheats like crazy and it drives me nuts that he does, I at least know that I am doing everything I can to prevent complete kidney failure and having to go on dialysis.  Yup, it's that drastic and that important.

Now the Dad informed me the other day when I was expressing my dismay at his away from home eating choices, he's old and gonna die of something, His pat answer to everything anymore, and I let him know that it won't be because I didn't do my job to try and keep his disease from getting worse.  His comeback was "When I have all the aches and pains of being too old I will have you to thank"  My response was "I certainly hope so!"  Take that Old Man!!

Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup - No Sodium, Low Potassium Recipe

Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup - No Sodium, Low Potassium Recipe

Raw Mushrooms contain approximately 126-250 mg Potassium per half cup, which is listed in the medium category of our Kaiser Nutrition booklet.  Based on a serving size of 1/2 cup as a sauce over noodles or rice, this would break down to approximately
There are so many different Copy Cat Recipes online for this that it was difficult to decide which one to try.  This version turned out to be very good and I can't wait to use it with pork chops or round steaks. If I were going to eat just the soup, I'd have to add some salt. Or perhaps instead of adding the Table Tasty while cooking, I'd try adding it at the table, I'm thinking the slightly salty taste may cook out of it.

In the next batch I will leave out the celery and garlic and see how that works. I added the garlic because there was a weird taste that we decided was the celery, and it was like it was missing something to tone down that flavor.  The garlic powder worked and really gave it that little boost it needed. I'll be sure to post how the no celery, no garlic recipe turns out when I make it. I'm thinking it might be a closer match to the canned stuff, minus that salty taste and be more appropriate for my Tuna Casserole :)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup of finely minced onion
• 1/4 cup of finely minced celery
• 4 cups (approx. 12 ounces) coarsely chopped fresh mushrooms
• 2 teaspoon of Table Tasty salt replacement
• 1 tablespoon Garlic Granules (powder or fresh should work I happen to like to use Kirkland brand from Costco)
• 3/4 cup of all purpose flour
• 3 cups of water
• 3 packets of No Sodium Chicken Boullion crystals
• 1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar
• 1 cup Mocha Mix

Instructions

Melt the butter in a large skillet and saute the onion and celery over medium heat until tender but not browned. Stir in the chopped mushrooms and salt replacement; cook and stir about 2-3 minutes. Stir in the flour a little at a time until fully incorporated, about 4 minutes, stirring constantly. Mix the boulion packets with the water, increase heat to medium high and slowly add the broth a little at a time, until fully incorporated. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Stir in sugar and Mocha Mix and heat through. 

Use about 1-1/4 cups to replace a can of soup. The recipe makes a little over a quart, or roughly enough to equal about 4 cans.  Use any place where you would use Campbell's Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup. Can be frozen.

P.S.  I use my beloved food processor (Thank You, Evelyn) for chopping and mincing the vegetables, makes this a snap to put together.

I adapted this recipe from
http://www.deepsouthdish.com/2010/11/homemade-condensed-cream-of-mushroom.html
Many Thanks for sharing your "beloved southern béchamel".

Sunday, September 08, 2013

Seasoned Pork Chops - SUCCESS!

McCormick's Perfect Pinch Garlic and Herb Salt Free (no potassium on the label either) turned ordinary pork chops into a delicious dinner this evening.  They got devoured before I thought to take a picture so the next time we make them, I'll be sure to snap a shot.

E.J. made these and here's what he did:
 Sautéed a couple of onion slices in some olive oil.
Coated the chops with McCormick's Perfect Pinch Garlic and Herb salt free seasoning and some black pepper on both sides of pork chop and cooked them in the onion flavored EVO (can use Canola Oil too) on a low heat until done, time will depend on the thickness of the chop.

That was it and they were moist and wonderful.  YAY!  I just know we are going to be able to do this!!  We added some garlic noodles (oops, the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter has some potassium and salt in it as a preservative, hopefully it's not much though.  The amount isn't listed) margarine, oregano, pepper and E.J. likes to add basil, I don't like the basil in it and I add salt to mine on my plate, and some canned salt free green beans flavored with a couple spritzes of the fake butter spray and we had a rather yummy dinner that met all the new diet restrictions.

Wednesday, September 04, 2013

No Salt, No Potassium, No Sugar, No Carbs, No Protien, What the heck?

I'm going to try to start sharing this restricted diet journey so that others who are having to change their whole culinary world may find a little help from our trial and error.

The Dad has fiddled around (barely paid any attention) with his diabetes to the point where he now has CKD (Chronic Kidney Disease) and is approaching stage 4 along with hyper-tension.  His doctor woke him up to the reality of his situation when the threat of dialysis came into his most recent evaluation of lab tests, so we are in a hard scrabble to make the necessary adjustments to his eating habits and it's really proving to be confusing and extremely difficult and I feel so bad that he has to give up all the foods he loves the most in order to extend his life a bit longer.  (Whew! talk about a run on sentence!)

We had been working on the diabetes at meal times, but he would eat out and sneak things that he wasn't supposed to have.  I'm happy to say, he has stopped that.  At least so far :)  He's actually trying to keep a log of what he eats during the day (well, he tells me and I write it down) but we are working together on it.  Sometimes I think it's harder on E.J.  He likes to cook with all kinds of stuff that are now on the cannot have list and we are all having to change our thinking and make the proper adjustments when cooking for him.

One thing that is helping us is that we fix the bland meal that the Dad can eat and then after he is fed, we doctor it up with the stuff to make it taste yummy.  So far, we've managed to make some interestingly edible (not exactly delicious but edible) substitutions to our dinner rotation.  Lunches are proving to be the real tricky meal of the day.

Plus, I'm so morbidly obese that it's really hard for anyone to take dietary advice from me.  It's gonna be that 'practice what you preach' kind of thing.  I don't have the same health concerns that he has, but my problems are mostly weight related and I should have been paying attention to my eating habits for many years now too.  NO MORE EXCUSES!!!!

We went to the nutrition class that Kaiser holds for kidney care, and he went to the diabetes class a few years back.  They have both been really helpful, but we have put in a request for a personal nutritionist to help us with meal planning.  Doing this on our own, with all the vague and inconsistent information we are gleaning from just about everywhere is not helping us much.  We have come up with some really good substitutions so far and I hope to share them here, however, the quest continues for better recipes and meal plans.

I want Pizza!! But I don't want to pay a gazillion bucks for it, plus I want it now!! Not in 45 minutes or more. So? I dug out a can of tomato sauce, dumped some dried basil, oregano, a pinch of thyme and bunch of re-hydrated minced garlic and a packet of crushed red peppers from the last pizza delivery in a little saucepan, warmed it up so the flavors could blend and Viola! Yummy pizza sauce! I looked up recipes online, and there are a bunch of them but what I was hoping to find was a Copykat recipe for Pappa Murphy's Take N Bake red sauce. All I could find was the garlic ranch chicken sauce. I might try that the next time I have left over chicken meat, tonight all I had for my toppings was thin sliced sandwich ham, sliced black olives and medium cheddar cheese. Came out a bit greasy from the cheddar, but smacked those pizza craving buttons and I am extremely satisfied :) Oh! It's an old sour dough bread round I had in the freezer that I used for the crust. I guess that makes it Pizza Bread instead. Either way, I sure hope I can duplicate my sauce 'cause it was delicious!!

Friday, June 10, 2011

Left Over Pot Roast? Make Black Bean Chili!

Yup, I'm not much of a pot roast fan, but my husband and his father like it and it's one of the less expensive cuts of meat that I just can't pass up when on sale. However, we always end up with a huge chunk of that grisselly fatty meat left over. Usually it gets put into a sandwich for lunch the next day, then sits in the fridge till it turns into a nice little dog snack for Nelly and Scooby.

This time, we had such a large roast, there was just too much to let go to waste. I got this idea that since the old fashioned ground up suet meat that we used to get to make chili con carne was mostly fat with a little beef in it, why couldn't I grind up the left over pot roast and use it the same way? Guess what? It turned out super delicious!! We trimmed off as much of the fat and grissle as we could, chopped it up in the food processor and then added it to a pot of black beans, seasoned it up for chili and it was fantastic!!

Getting creative with leftovers is soooo much fun, especially when it turns out well :)

Wednesday, March 09, 2011

Enchilada's!

I love enchilada's, but rarely make them because I never really cared for the red sauce from the can. My mother used it, but she always added left over gravies from other meals, like chicken gravy or roast beef gravy or even both kinds of gravy added to the same red enchilada sauce, and they were always delicious. Actually, now that I think on it, I believe she used those powdered sauce spices you buy in the envelop and doctored those up instead of the cans, or maybe both from time to time. She was a Super Mom, career woman on her own with kids, before the term was even coined and back in the 60's there weren't many kitchen shortcuts like there are nowadays. (Isn't it amazing how delicious pre cooked food from the market deli's are now? We take it for granted but the meals you can make with a simple roasted chicken picked up on the way home are wonderful!)

Well, I had left over pork adobo taco meat, left over frijoles, onions and other taco fixings that I usually make into a taco salad, but it was a cold and gloomy, rainy day and I wasn't in the mood for a cold salad meal. Aha! Why not make Enchilada's! Meat, cheese, onions, corn tortillas, a little bit of this and that all rolled up together with enchilada sauce, huh-oh, I don't buy enchilada red sauce, not a can of it in the house and I was about to give up on the idea since I didn't have any left over gravies either. Dumb idea Clarisse, and it hit me. Doh! The internet silly woman! Recipes are all over it, I've been trying new stuff for years now, ever since I got "connected" and Viola, several home made enchilada sauce recipesright at my fingertips . They are really super simple too, and guess what? Delicious!! I should have taken a picture but my family devoured them before I could get the camera out.

What's my point? I'm an idiot sometimes. It's like when the power goes out and you think you can't use your gas stove because it has electric ignition switches and all you really need to do is hold a match up to the burner to get fire LOL!!!