Rosie's Favorite Lower Sodium Food List

Happy & Healthy 2023! 

My New Year's resolution is to start a personal list of my favorite low sodium, prepared foods, on my preciouscooking.blogspot.com blog, as sometimes I am too tired to cook food from scratch. Note the serving size when checking the sodium on the label. I like to check the number of servings in the product.

I don't like to bake bread in the hot summer and have had problems finding a low sodium bread that I liked. The brands that I like include some loaves of ,"Daves" and "Ezekial" In Dave's the thin-sliced, organic, sweetner is organic fruit juices, Powerseed at 1 lb 4.5 oz has 90 mg of sodium per slice compared to other brands that very from 150-250 mg sodium per slice. The Ezekial bread that I lean to at the moment is their sprouted grain bread at 75 mg sodium per thin slice.

Dave's Bread

Sodium 90 mg/slice

fat 1.5 gram

protein 3 grams per slice

Ezekiel 4:9 Fourless Sprouted Grain Bread

Sodium 75 mg/slice

fat 0.5 gram

protein 5 grams per slice

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I found the pasta sauce by browsing the pasta section at my local Marc's. 

*** Francesco Rinaldi Original Recipe No Salt Added Homemade pasta sauce recipe. (green label) by LiDestri foods, Fairport, NY ***

 Per 1/2 cup: 

Sodium - 40mg 

Calories  - 60 per serving

Fat - 1g

Potassium - 490mg

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Kuner's No Salt Added Chili Beans: Original in Chili Sauce

KunersFoods.com

Sodium 10 mg per 1/2 cup serving,  15 ounce can 3 1/2 servings, total sodium in can 35 mg

Potassium 390 mg per serving

Protein 7 g per serving 

Fat 1 mg per serving

Other Kuner's No Salt Added beans about 5 mg per 1/2 cup serving

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V8, Low Sodium Original

Sodium 98mg per serving which is a small 5 fluid ounces can

Fat 0 g

Protein 1 g

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Ocean Spray Jellied Cranberry Sauce

Sodium 10 mg per 1/4 cup, 6 servings per 14 ounce can = 60 mg per can

Fat 0g

Protein 0g

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Bumble Bee SNACK ON THE RUN Tuna Salad Kit with crackers. 3.5 ounces

Sodium Tuna portion 220 mg, Crackers 130 mg -- total snack 350 mg

Calories total 300

Fat total 22g

Protein 7g

SNACK ON THE RUN also includes snacks with lower fat tuna and chicken salad options

I love the little spoon that comes with the can and the tightly wrapped crackers in the box! I tried all the tuna and chicken flavors and love them all for a snack to take to the park, eat at home, or for a quick lunch!

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The lower salt cheeses that I have found are Swiss, fresh mozarella, some goat cheeses. If eating the cheese with bread, two slices of bread can be 500 mg of sodium. I search for low sodium breads but to date the only one I like is Dave's. In the winter I bake my own!

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TV DINNERS

The lowest sodium TV dinner that I have found is Healthy Choice Margherita Balsamic Chicken at 360 mg sodium.

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Fall Veggie Spaghetti

We love vegetables in our spaghetti instead of meat. I include tomatoes (canned these days as the deer eat anything that I plant but for herbs), a can of no salt kidney or other beans labeled no salt, sliced mushrooms, thin sliced zucchini, garlic, herbs such as fresh lemon thyme and basil, cinnamon, tumeric, and today I added a few tablespoons of a butternut squash that was not as naturally sweet as usual. I included half of a jar of a prepared sauce from the grocery store and the small bit of baked butternut squash gave the sauce some body and a very smooth texture.

I will always add some baked winter squash to future sauces as it thickened the sauce and added a hint of sweetness. Sometimes, I add a bit of honey to the spaghetti sauce.

Mock Cincinnati Chili

Having been privileged to live in Cincinnati, Ohio, for several years, I learned to love Cincinnati foods from Cincinnati chili, to Graeter's bakery products, and Graeter's incredible ice cream! I remember our very first visit to a local restaurant, not a chili parlor, when the waitress reviewed the specials and said "chili spaghetti". I replied "chili or spaghetti?" and she responded, "No, chili-spaghetti, it is all-in-one, mixed together." I was hooked forever and sometimes make chili alone, but oftentimes, boil a pot of spaghetti along with my chili!

I love any kind of chili from the Texas brew to Cleveland chili contests, but my favorite is Cincinnati chili, which has a rich dark color! Since many of our meals today lean to vegetarian, I have adopted the original Cinti chili to what we prefer, a meatless chile. Since beans are considered as "meat" in the new food tables, and I much prefer vegetables to meat, I include a few of the Cinti secret ingredients in my veggie chili.

When I do not have time to make the vegetarian version of what I call "real" Cincinnati chili per the many recipes I have from the natives, I make "mock" Cinti chili by adding heaping teaspoons of cinnamon and one heaping tablespoon of chocolate cocoa powder to my small pot of chili.

Pictured below are some of my "secret" ingredients and my bowl of chili plus cheese! The traditional cheese used in Cincinnati chili is a yellow shredded cheese, but I love mozzarella cheese and use it on anything!

                                                                             

Grocery Shopping

I went grocery shopping to today, the first time I have shopped since we attended Dr Esselstyn's lecture at the Mayfield Regional Library last Saturday. I am thankful that my husband came to the lecture and that he accompanied me grocery shopping. Because he went to the lecture and heard so much about kale, my husband was interested in seeing kale in our local market.

I always grow flowering kale in my yard and have cooked it in the past, only to have to eat it by myself. However, after attending the lecture, my husband not only tasted the kale both raw and cooked, but helped prepare it, by stripping the leafy areas from the stem as Dr. Esselstyne's wife demonstrated.

To strip the kale, take a leaf and hold the stem in your right hand and strip the softer leafy areas, away from the stem in one continuous motion. My husband is actually better at this than I am.

We used the kale tonight as we would have used pasta, the base for a vegetarian bean and barley chili.

Having lived in Cincinnati for 14 years, combining homemade chili with pasta is natural. Substituting cooked and slightly chopped kale for the pasta, was not only delicious, but a way to disguise kale for the non-kale eating world! My husband loved it and so did I!

I used about a cup of dried black beans, 1/2 cup of red pinto beans, and put them in a put, and just covered them with cold water. Per the instructions on the bean package, I boiled them for two minutes and let them sit for about an hour before continuing the cooking process. The directions say that the beans will cook in two hours, but they are always a bit too hard for us at the two-hour stage. I prefer to cook them twice the time stated on the package, add more liquid, about 1 cup of spaghetti sauce, tomato paste, or even sausa taking up too much room in my refrigerator! I had at least a teaspoon of cinnamon, garlic powder, onion powder and ab out a cup of each of chopped onions, celery, and carrots.

I had cooked the kale until tender, the mass of kale barely made two generous servings for the base of a bowl of chili!

Notice how the kale quickly cooked down. I have flowering kale in my yard, but don't want to pick it yet.
I also purchased a huge cabbage and plan to make "stuffed cabbage casserole" without using meat.

We may find ourselves between Dr. Dean Ornish's diet and that of Dr; Esselstyn, but in any case, we were energized to include more crucifers in our diet and hope to make kale a regular visitor at our house!

Have you ever seen such a huge cabbage?

The stripped kale filled up the pot, but watch how it shrinks after cooking.

The kale cooked down in the picture below where it turned from a bright green to a very deep green.

Below is how the kale looked after stripping the leafy areas from the stalks using the method which Dr. Esselstyn's wife showed at the lecture at the Mayfield Regional Library last Saturday.

I took the stems of the stalks and cut them on a slant into bite size pieces which I plan to cook tomorrow for lunch with our left over vegetarian bean and barley chili. Mrs. Ellelstyn mentioned that she cut the stems on a slant, and I think that cutting the stems into equal pieces on a slant, may speed up the cooking process.

Below is the large pot of vegetarian bean and barley chili cooking on the stove. I cooked it for more than four hours. After about three hours I blended some of the bean and barley mixture in the blender and pureed the mixture before putting it back in to the pot.

                               Yum, it is so much better than I expected!