Online Grocery Shopping

So today I finally broke down and did some grocery shopping online.  This store: http://healthyheartmarket.com/ has a lot of sodium free options, and even have a link to all of their sodium free items.  That makes for easy shopping, which I love.  I think that’s the one gene I didn’t inherit as a female, well except for when it comes to shoes.  So it’ll be like Christmas getting all these new items to try.  I bought the Featherweight Sodium Free Baking Powder, Ener-G Baking Soda, Mr. Spice Tangy Bang Hot Sauce, Mrs. Dash Mesquite Grille 10 Minute Marinade, and more Herb-Ox Beef Bouillon (50 packets).

I can’t wait to get the baking powder and soda so I can try those mocha muffins and some other desserts.  Also Clay was excited that I found the Mrs. Dash marinade.  He looked at Wal-Mart before I ordered and he couldn’t find the marinade so I just ordered it.  He also LOVES hot sauce, so we’ll give this one a shot and see how he likes it.  I’m pretty sure he could eat hot sauce on everything.

Also http://www.kashi.com/kidfriendlyfoods is giving away a free sample of either their Cinnamon Harvest cereal (which has 0mg of sodium, wow!) or there Peanutty Dark Chocolate layered granola bar (which has 80mg of sodium).  So since it’s a free sample we chose the cereal for Clay to try.  I think have multiple options is good so we’ll see how he likes it.

Sprinkles

So we bought a few different “sprinkles” or Mrs. Dash’s seasonings tonight.  We bought Southwest Chipotle, Chicken, and Extra Spicy. 

Clay also bought some unseasoned chicken wings that he can spice up.  The great thing about Mrs. Dash is that she has about 10 different mixes that are all salt free.  Clay decided to try the Southwes Chipotle blend tonight and he said it was pretty good.  It’s a really good thing he likes spices, especially spicy spices.  I just don’t what else you can put the spices on, maybe rice or some other grain?  Has anyone ever tried it on anything non-meat? 

Asian Persuasion

Since my husband if Filipino he is used to eating fried rice.  Well all fried rice has soy sauce on it and soy is DANG high in sodium (2 tablespoons=900mg), even the low sodium soy (2 tablespoons=560-600mg) is ridiculously high.  So tonight I made our own soy sauce for fried rice.  Well it didn’t exactly taste like soy, but it was close (I guess).  The whole batch of “soy” sauce had a total of 176mg of sodium, which was a total of ½ cup (8 servings=8tablespoons at 22mg per serving).  I used 2 eggs, which have a total of 65mg per egg, and the rice, of course, is 0mg.  I also added some chopped green onions, which Clay later said he didn’t like.  It tasted fine enough to eat, but nothing like good fried rice that we’re used to.

I think my husband and his sister may be going to our local farmer’s market tomorrow to see what’s available for dinner or lunches this week.  So we’ll see what he finds tomorrow.  

B.Y.O.S.S

So tonight we actually had the stuffed pasta shells for dinner.  We bought a different brand of spaghetti sauce this time as well.  It tasted much better straight from the jar when compared to the first one.  This one has 25mg of sodium per serving where as the other had 10mg.  I did however throw it all in a pot and add more spices.  The stuffed shells turned out pretty good and tasted pretty good as well.

Thursday night we got invited over to my sister-in-law’s house for dinner where we had spaghetti.  So of course we had to BYOSS (bring your own spaghetti sauce).  This is something that we’ll probably have to do a lot.  We’ll probably be making a lot of our stuff before we head over the parties/family get-togethers or eating before we go. 

So we went on another food shopping adventure this weekend to find the no sodium beef bouillon and baking soda and powder.  I was only able to find the beef bouillon at Fresh Market.  This is one ingredient that I need to make our own soy sauce.  I cooked rice today in our rice cooker so that it’ll be ready for fried rice tomorrow night.  I’ve read that day old rice is the best for fried rice.  I also have to get some red wine vinegar to make the sauce.

Oh and Clay and his brother-in-law were picking some things up at our local Kroger for dinner on Thursday night and he found some 0mg corn tortillas by Tia Rosa in the international food isle.  We’ll have to get those and see if they hold up better than the ones we currently have.  We also picked up the Xochitl brand tortilla chips (0mg) because Clay wanted some salsa.  They taste just like the chips at most Mexican restaurants (which my husband usually puts salt on).  He made his own salsa, which I didn’t like because it had too much jalapeno.  He liked it and now the chips are pretty much gone.

We also made pancakes for the first time with our new mix.  It’s going to take some getting used to.  It’s an oat bran mix so it’s very grainy and gritty tasting, which we are not used to.  The recipe also suggests that you can add berries, chopped nuts, vanilla or cinnamon.  We’ll probably try the vanilla or cinnamon and possibly the nuts.  I’m not big on berries or cooked fruit. 

I still need to check Whole Foods for the baking soda and powder, otherwise I’ll be ordering them from this website: http://healthyheartmarket.com/.  This is the brand that the author of our cookbook, Dick Logue, recommended, Hain Pure Foods.

We also had another great find this weekend.  Clay has always liked Frosted Mini Wheats and we bought a three sister’s brand at Whole Foods that only had 10mg of sodium per serving (1 cup).  Well it turns out that the Kellogg’s Frosted Mini Wheats only has 5mg per serving (24 biscuits)!  Which is totally great because I always have coupons for Kellogg’s cereal or Mini Wheats.  The next best was corn pops, which was 120mg per serving (which was 1 cup).

This finding low to no sodium foods seems to be getting easier, but at the same time a big challenge.  The one meal that is still hard for us is lunch.  Mostly because you want something quick and easy and sandwiches get old quick.  Plus Clay is really staring to get tired of PB&J’s.  I still need to look into the sodium count for Pita’s and see if that could be an option for lunches.  At least we could fill that with fresh veggies or sautéed ones, so I guess the sodium count for a pita wouldn’t really matter when what’s going in it is practically zero.  We can’t just pick up Lean Pockets or Lean Cuisines because the sodium count is outrageous!  Seriously, next time you head to the store pick one up and check out the sodium count, I think you’ll be shocked.

And one last thing, this container store find has totally come in handy for me and I use it ALL the time.

Homemade Enchilada Sauce

So tonight we finally used our low sodium cookbook for dinner (and we even picked out dinner for tomorrow night).  Tonight we decided to do enchiladas.  I used the recipe for enchilada sauce from the cookbook and used our 0mg sodium tortillas.  The sauce has to simmer for an hour and is very simple to make.  I think it’s a total of 8-10 ingredients, and I doubled up on the spices (something I’ve been learning).  Here’s the sauce:

I decided to puree the sauce when it was finished because I don’t like chunky sauces.  The one thing I don’t like about the tortillas, besides the taste, is that they are hard and break and crack very easily.  I had to warm them up in the microwave with dame paper towels so that I could work with them.  I filled mine with cheese and Clay’s with cheese and diced chicken.  I poured the sauce on them and cooked them for 15 minutes at 375°.  Here’s how they turned out:

So when we started scooping them up from the dish they quickly fell apart and this is what our enchiladas looked like on our plate:

They completely disintegrated.  I guess salt is a glue of some sort, who knows?  But they were really good.  Next time we’ll be doing a casserole type of layering with the cheese and tortillas.  But I’m pretty sure that if I had friends over and cooked with this enchilada sauce they would have no idea that it was low sodium (sauce=5mg of sodium and yields 16 servings).  I think we only used about half of the sauce for a total of 40mg of sodium for the sauce.  Of course the cheese was about 510 (for 3 enchiladas) and the total amount of sodium was roughly 530mg.  Not too bad.

We stopped by our local Kroger today (not the super one) and they have all the low sodium items that we need.  While we were there I also looked to see if they had the no sodium beef bouillon, which they only had chicken.  I need the no sodium beef to try to make soy sauce.  I also looked for the no sodium baking soda and powder and they didn’t have it either.  I’m probably going to look at Whole Foods and Fresh Market and if they don’t have it then I’ll have to order it online.  I really want to make these mocha muffins for breakfast soon.  Each muffin only has 23mg of sodium.

So tomorrow I’m going to be making some stuffed pasta shells and will be using our spiced up spaghetti sauce.  Hopefully it turns out well.  We’ll see tomorrow. 

Ode to the Smartphone (and internet)

I am somewhat glad to be living in an era where we can have internet access at a moment’s notice.  Personally my cell phone is not my baby, nor do I feel like I need it all the time, and if I do forget it, it’s not a big deal for me.  I feel like I’m pretty techy and well informed with new gadgets and technology, but I don’t care when it comes to cell phones.  And when my sweet little Olive chewed up my trust brick phone an month ago I gave my husband VERY specific instructions for picking out my new cell phone (I had to work the next day so he had to go get me a new one.  The only instructions he was give were: 1. Simple, 2) it had to be a brick phone with the regular number pad, and 3) no camera or other flashy things.  So I now have a Go phone, which is just what I needed and wanted.

Now having said all of this about how anit-smartphone I am, since Clay was diagnosed with Acute IgAN, and since we’ve have to completely change our diet, the smartphone has actually been very handy.  I really think that our phone and our Galaxy Tab (similar to the iPad) will come in VERY handy for our new diet, especially on vacations.  It’s also very helpful that most restaurants and foods have their nutritional info on the web making it very easy to access from Clay’s smartphone.  I can’t even image trying to live with this diet change 10-15 years ago (hello, remember dial up? Yikes!). 

So even though I may never get a smartphone, (although I’ve considered it, but only if I can get the R2-D2 droid phone or if someone will make a Harry Potter smartphone.  I’d definitely be getting that phone and probably wait in line for days to get that phone), it has made life a little easier for us.  For instance we all have those days where we’re out shopping or running errands and get so busy you don’t realize how hungry you are and that you’re too tired to go home and cook so you just stop at a restaurant.  The easy access to the internet form the phone will definitely come in handy in those moments because we’ll be able to pull up almost any restaurants nutritional info in an instance. 

So to the creator of the internet (Al Gore) and smartphone (Steve Jobs) I thank you.  

I got nothin' (for a title at least)

Today we’ve been kind of lazy.  We decided to have salad and baked potatoes for dinner.  Clay found these tortilla strips for salads and they only have 15mg of sodium per serving, and they taste pretty good and look really pretty (they are tri-colored, red, blue and yellow).  Another item that I have read that gives a nice little crunch to your salad are unsalted sunflower seeds (0mg).  I’ll have to pick some up the next time we’re out.  I think they’ll taste good on a baked potato.  Clay also bought some olive oil and vinegar Newmann’s Own dressing (yuck, I hate vinegar) that is pretty low in sodium.  I think he said he was going to try it on his baked potato tonight.  Who knows?

So starting tomorrow we’ll have a house full of dogs, five of them to be exact.  It’s going to be pretty crazy around here for about a week.  This Saturday we plan on taking Marcus, our foster, to Petsmart to try and get him adopted.  I’m going to be furminatng him everyday this week to get his coat super shiny and soft and he got a nice bath yesterday.  I’ll be going to Hobby Lobby on Wednesday to pick out some fabric for his new bandana.  I love making our girls special bandanas; they look so cute in them.  Hopefully we can teach Marcus more tricks, he learned to sit today, before Saturday.  That will definitely make him more marketable. 

I need to look through the cookbook and find a recipe to make for dinner tomorrow.  It’s much easier to have things planned out, especially when we can’t just go to the cabinet and eat whatever.

Team Amber=One lone soldier

So we had a busy day with my sister-in-law’s wedding yesterday.  We left our house at 10:30 and finally got home around 9.  I got to meet Grandma Mosley, Aunt Wilma (really Clay’s great Aunt) his Aunt Becky and her son Chase.  It was nice getting to meet everyone.

My job at the wedding was the guestbook attendant.  I had some little helpers passing out the programs with me; they are Clay’s cousin’s kids, Grace and Elizabeth.  These girls are so sweet and pretty well behaved.  At one point Elizabeth said to me, “Sigh.  Why did I have to get such a hard job passing out the programs?  Next time I’m not going to pick such a hard job.”  It was too funny.  Here's a great pic of my fabulous helpers:

Now on to the food issue, we had breakfast before we left the house.  The wedding was at 2 so we weren’t going to be eating till 3ish, and we had to be there at 11:30 for pictures.  So of course Clay was hungry right when we go there. 

Before I continue I have to give a little back-story here.  So both of Clay’s sisters husbands and his cousins husband all get crazy when it comes to food.  For future reference I’m going to call them The Boys.  They are always talking about going to Sonic and grabbing a super sonic double cheeseburger (for which they have named the SSDC), getting a pizza, getting an Angry Whopper, or a KFC famous bowl all for lunch and then hitting up the Kripsy Kreme for dessert.  So these boys don’t make this whole lifestyle change easy for me.

So once we got to the church Clay was hungry and some of the his Aunts were already making Lumpia.  So The Boys convinced Clay (which I know didn’t really take a lot of work doing) that he should have at least 5 free days a year to just eat normal food.  I don’t necessarily agree with this because this isn’t a diet this is a lifestyle change.  Plus I know how Clay gets and the 5 free days will just keep adding up.  So Clay decided that he was taking a free day and that he was just going to eat what he wanted.  I couldn’t really argue since I would look like the nagging bad cop wife and Clay had already made up his mind and once that happens there’s no changing it.  So there’s no telling how many mg of sodium he had yesterday.

So today it’s back to the diet.  Neither of us had breakfast this morning.  I slept in and Clay got up and mowed.  We had Subway for lunch and are planning on making our pizza and salad for dinner.

Also staring Tuesday night we’ll be adding two more dogs to the mix.  We are dogsitting for my sister-in-law while they take a little vacay.  So we’ll have a house of 5 dogs for 6 days.  It’s going to be crazy, but fun.

"Some people live to eat, but we eat to live.”

So today has been a busy day.  We got up at 6 this morning and took our dogs on a walk.  Marcus, our foster, did really well on the walk.  We used our pinch collar, which makes controlling the dog much easier.  We also use a pinch collar with Olive and Riley is so obedient that she can walk without a leash.  Our foster Marcus is so sweet.  He’s always wagging his tail and he seems to catch on quickly (like walking on the leash and using the doggy door) and he’s house trained.  He did, however, poop right in the middle of the trail on our walk this morning.  I hope this sweet guy finds a home quickly.

I don’t have many stats from our meals today as didn’t write them down and I don’t remember any of them.  This morning once we got back we decided to have breakfast burritos using our 0mg sodium soft corn tortillas.  We scrambled some eggs, cheese and black beans.  Clay added jalapenos to his and I sprinkled some red pepper flakes on mine.  I will have to say that the tortillas tasted like thin cardboard…..no flavor and hard, even after being warmed up in a skillet.  Oh well, I suppose we’ll get used to the taste.

We saw the final Harry Potter movie this morning and it was great.  I even got a pair of cool Harry Potter style 3D glasses.

We also had Clay’s sisters wedding rehearsal tonight and the food thing was not that big of a situation.  Clay had a piece of roast (which had a sauce or stock on it) and a salad.  Since we didn’t cook the meat we don’t really know what the stock was and how much sodium was in it.  This whole lifestyle change in pretty challenging and Clay says that he’s hungry all the time since our portions are smaller.  Our new favorite quote is, “Some people live to eat, but we eat to live.”

Pizza Party

So tonight we had our first low sodium pizza.  The total for my half, cheese only, was 455mg, and Clay’s, with added jalapenos, was 505mg.  We used an Udi’s brand pizza crust (total 560mg) and it was nice and crispy.  I made the pizza sauce (1 ½ cups=12 servings at 5mg per serving for a total of 60mg) from a recipe in our low sodium cookbook.  I have come to find that I have to double or even triple the amount of herbs and spices to really knock out that no salt taste.  Again, I have yet to find any low sodium or salt free cheese so we just went with our part-skim mozzarella, which is 200mg per ¼ cup (we uses 1 ½ servings total). 

My co-worker suggested that if we wanted a crisper crust to pre-cook the crust for 5 mins before adding any toppings.  We did that, added all of our toppings and cooked the pizza for another 3 mins or until the cheese was melted.  The pizza was really pretty good and Clay pretty much loved it, he just wished he could have more.  Here’s the final product:

Not so sure what we’re going to be doing about dinner tomorrow night.  Clay’s youngest sister is getting married and the rehearsal dinner is tomorrow.  This is going to be a real test for us because we won’t know how any of it is prepared or anything.  We may be eating before heading out.  We’ve also got the wedding Saturday and of course there will be Filipino food there and this will be one of the first times that Clay has to pass up eating Lumpia (Filipino eggroll).

This is a big weekend for us for a few reasons.  1) Today is my Friday.  I took off work tomorrow to go see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2.  We’re going to see it in IMAX 3D tomorrow morning at 10.  2).  We go our very first foster dog today.  His name is Markus and he’s a great dog.  He’s getting along so well with our baby girls.  Had we not taken him in today and if he had not gotten adopted this weekend he could have been put down.  So sad!  3)  Wedding weekend. 

Here's a pic of our foster dog Markus (boy our couch is dirty):

Burger Mama

So tonight we had black bean burgers (a recipe from my Betty Crocker cookbook, and one of our favorites).  We didn’t pick a recipe from our low sodium cookbook, as we were lazy bums today.  I also didn’t do much tweaking to the recipe.  As there are only two of us eating dinner I always half the burger recipe. 

So the recipe (this is the recipe halved) calls for:

½ can of black beans (647mg)

1 large egg (65mg)

½ cup of bread crumbs (whole wheat 0mg)

1 teaspoon chili powder (140mg)

¼ cup of cornmeal (0mg)

and I added a sprinkle of red pepper flakes (0mg) for an extra little kick

Heat skillet with oil on medium heat.  Mix (puree) beans in blender or food processor and add it to the remaining ingredients.  Mix all ingredients, except for cornmeal, and form into patties.  Coat patties in cornmeal and cook for 5 minutes on each side.  Then it’s time to eat.

Our whole wheat lite hamburger buns had 170mg of sodium (it’s hard enough to find 0mg sodium bread let alone hamburger buns!).  Clay added chopped jalapenos to his burgers.  So the total including bun (not condiments, I prefer mayo while Clay prefers ketchup) and cheese came to 518mg for my burger and Clay’s with the added jalapenos was 541mg. 

We could have really cut this way in half, or more than half, had I used bagged black beans, which have 0mg of sodium.  Since I’ve always used canned black beans I was totally unaware that you have to soak the beans either for an hour or overnight and then they take 1 1/2 -2 hours to cook.  So lesson learned.

I also simmered the spaghetti sauce and added oregano, parsley, onion powder, garlic powder, basil and chopped fresh garlic.  I think I added about 3 teaspoons of each of these spices and Clay gave the sauce his approval. 

Tomorrow we will be trying pizza since it’s my Friday (I took off work on Friday to go see the final Harry Potter.  I can’t wait!).  We bought an Udi’s brand, which is also gluten free, pizza crust and I’m going to be using a pizza sauce recipe from the low sodium cookbook.  I have a feeling that herbs and spices are going to become our bestfriends.  Clamber+Sperbs=BFF 4EVA!

An Old Favorite

So tonight’s dinner was one of our regular dinners.  We had Cavender’s potatoes, corn (frozen), and green beans (canned).  We had to use canned green beans as we hate the thought of not using them or throwing them out.  A serving of canned green beans, which is ½ cup, had 390mg of sodium.  That is so crazy!  We had frozen corn, which has 0mg of sodium.  Now the best part of this dinner is actually a recipe from my mom, Cavender’s potatoes.  This recipe is really easy and super tasty.  And the best part is there is a sodium free (0mg) version of Cavender’s All Purpose Greek Seasoning.

Cavender’s Potatoes

4-6 potatoes (red or gold, skin on or off, we go skin on)

Cavender’s All Purpose Greek Seasoning

2 tablespoons of butter

2 tablespoons of water

You cut the potatoes up into chunks and put them in a glass microwaveable dish.  Add the water, Cavender’s, and put the 2 tablespoons of butter on top.  Wrap in saran wrap and cook for 20 minutes.  Then voila. 

My parents usually cook the Cavender’s potatoes on the grill by wrapping it in foil.  It’s good either way.

Clay also tried the 0mg sodium ketchup.  He said that it had the same after taste as the spaghetti sauce, but that it wasn’t as bad as the spaghetti sauce.  Since tomorrow is my day off (I’m totally sleeping in) I am going to try to tweak the spaghetti sauce.  Once of my co-workers suggested that I pour all the sauce in a pan and add fresh garlic, oregano, a bay leaf and other Italian seasonings to see if that helps with the flavor.  I’ll have Clay choose one of the recipes from the low sodium cookbook for dinner tomorrow.

Not so much

So tonight we tried the low sodium (10mg per ½ cup) spaghetti sauce.  Let’s just say we may be switching back to the Prego Heart to Heart sauce.  It wasn’t that bad tasting, but it had a sour or pickled after taste, and well, that’s really weird for spaghetti sauce.  Since pasta has 0mg of sodium we decided that we don’t want to sacrifice taste that much.  I believe the Prego Heart to Heart sauce is only 140mg per ½ cup, so not too bad.

Today my husband, Clay, tried the Ezekiel brand 0mg sodium bread and 0mg sodium peanut butter (organic).  When I called him on my lunch break to see if he tired the bread he didn’t sound very enthused.  He then stated that the bread tasted stale and that he wants to go back to regular bread.  Our current whole grain bread has only 115mg of sodium, so that would be okay with the 0mg sodium peanut butter.

I had time to look through my new cookbook today and I found a total of 57 recipes to try, including: cinnamon rolls, cheese biscuits, chocolate chip cookies, breakfast burritos and much more.  Before I can start making any of the baked goods I’ve got to find some no sodium baking soda and powder.  The guy who wrote the cookbook even wrote what the best brands was that sell these items and where you can get them.  That’s super handy (and I found them both online just like he said).

So we just got back on a walk with the puppy girls and let me just say even at 8:00, it’s still dang hot out there.  I think the heat index reached 110°F today.  YIKES! 

First grocery shop and dinner

So today was our first grocery shop using our new dietary restrictions.  It was much easier since we did our learning trip yesterday.  Also on the way to do our shopping we stopped at Barnes and Noble and picked up a great low sodium cookbook (it even has a pizza recipe, which is my husbands favorite food).  The cookbook also has great recipes for spice mixes like taco seasoning and I can make our own soy sauce (which is another one of his favorites).  I’m pretty excited to go through the cookbook and find and try all of these recipes, or most of them.

So today we stopped at Whole Foods and got all the stuff we couldn’t find at our Kroger Marketplace.  We were able to buy both hard and soft shells for tacos that have 0mg of sodium!  I’m so glad we live in a city big enough to have both of these stores so close to home.  I couldn’t imagine living in a small town and driving hours or just ordering all the food online.

So tonight we decided to have our meatless tacos that came from my Better Homes and Gardens The New Cookbook: Special Edition.  I of course had to make some minor changes to the recipe in order for it to be lower sodium.  This recipe is super easy and delicious and tasted much better than I thought with the lower sodium substitutes.  I even used my new cookbook to make the taco seasoning with spices that I already have.  Here’s my adaptation of the recipe from the cookbook:

¼ cup of Bulger  (cook Bulger with ¾ cup of water till it boils, and simmer, covered for 15 minutes)

Then add 1 8-ounce can of no salt added tomato sauce and 2 teaspoons of the homemade taco seasoning.  Simmer till heated through.

Here’s the taco seasoning recipe from the cookbook 500 Low Sodium Recipes:

2 teaspoons of chili powder, all-purpose flour, cumin, and dried oregano

½ teaspoon of onion powder, garlic powder, and cayenne pepper

I put all of these ingredients in a plastic bag and shake till blended (I put all of mine in a small Rubbermaid container for easier storage)

This entire recipe here consisted of 168mg of sodium.  Our taco shells were 0mg and ¼ cup of Mexican blend cheese was a 170mg, 2 tablespoons of light sour cream were 35mg and 1 ½ cups of lettuce is 10mg.  The taco mix will fill a total of 10 tacos for a grand total of 60mg of sodium for each taco!

We also bought some organic oat bran pancake mix and we have to go back to get some maple syrup that doesn’t have sodium.  The one big thing that I hope I can find a recipe for or come up with is a really low sodium salsa.

Chapter 1

Okay, so I’m pretty new to the blogging world.  The main reason for this blog is to be able to share and possibly gain new information on our recent diet, or better yet, lifestyle change we have to make.  I’m hoping that my recipes and food finds will be beneficial for others.  Also please feel free to share any of your recipes or food finds.

So here’s a little background info on me.  My husband and I have been married for three years and we have two great “kids.”  Our oldest is our Golden Retriever Riley.  She’s three years old and we think she’s the best dog ever!  She’s so sweet and obedient and a big time daddy’s girl.  Our other kid is our shelter dog Olive a.k.a Bug.  She’s cocker spaniel, whippet/greyhound, and a lab mix.  She’s the most cuddly and sweetest shelter dog ever.  She’s totally a momma’s girl.  We are true dog lovers and we consider them to be part of the family (they even have their own puppy book with pics of them from their first year of life).  Oh, and they are totally spoiled with my homemade dog treats.

Enough about our kids lets get to the real reason for this blog.  Last March 2010 my husband told me that he was filling out an application for the FBI so that he could become a special agent.  He passed the test and was then selected for an interview.  He passed the interview and then had to pass the fit test (which is grueling, just insane).  He worked out non-stop for months on hand and got into great shape.  He took the fit test, but didn’t pass the first time (you get three chances then your done, forever).  So while he was waiting to take the fit test again he went ahead and did the full physical.  About a week after the physical the FBI sent him a letter stating that he needed to see a Nephrologist.  So in January of 2011 he saw a Nephrologist and a week later he was scheduled to have a kidney biopsy to decide if he had Lupus or IgAN (Immunoglobulin A Nephropathy).  The results came back and he was diagnosed with IgAN.  He and I both went to the next appointment with the Nephrologist and were told his outlook was good and that he just had to take Lisinopril and see the Nephrologist every six months for the rest of his life.

Fast forward to July 2011 my husband went back for his six-month follow-up and his creatinine levels were a lot higher than the Nephrologist was expecting.  He had to get some blood work done that confirmed that he as Acute IgAN, which is more aggressive than IgAN.  At that appointment he was told that he could either up his dosage of Lisinopril or go a very strict diet (lifestyle change).  The Nephrologist strongly suggested that we do the diet change and that my husband work out routinely.  The Nephrologist told my husband that if the Acute IgAN had not been caught so early that within less than 10 years he would have gone into complete kidney failure (also at some point in his lifetime he will be on dialysis, when will be up to us and how strict we follow the diet).  This is kind of scary news when your only 28 years old.

So the diet change consists of little to no soda, no fast food, little meat (basically vegetarian), and a very low sodium diet (no more than 2000mg of sodium).  So my first thought was, “Okay, we’ll do what we need to do and we’ll change whatever we need to change.”  So we had out “Last Supper” with my husband’s siblings and their husbands and kids, which consisted of his favorite food, pizza, and soda. 

Today, with notebook and pen in hand, we headed out to our Kroger Marketplace and Whole Foods to try and find some low to no sodium foods.  I was pleasantly surprised at the number of items we found and how all of our options weren’t going to be that much more expensive than what we are currently buying.  We bought a bag of Terra brand sweet potato chips (10mg for 17 chips) and Boulder Canyon brand kettle cooked potato chips (70 mg for 14 chips).  Both brands of chips were really good so we’ve got two options for chips.  We also found organic peanut butter, whole wheat bread crumbs, tortilla chips, ketchup and bread all with 0mg of sodium!  

   

Unfortunately there are no low sodium cookbooks out there so this is going to be an interesting experience.  Luckily for my husband I have been a vegetarian for the past 20 years and I’ve got some great vegetarian cookbooks.  He has been a real trooper for the past three years of not getting to eat meat at every meal, but as it turns out it has been a good thing.  Who knows, maybe we’ll be the ones to come up with a great low sodium cookbook.  That’s certainly not our goal now, but maybe in the future.  So for now we’re just taking it day by day and hopefully the changes we make will slow the progression of his Acute IgAN and will delay him from starting dialysis so early.

Tomorrow we’ll be making our first big shopping trip and starting our low sodium lifestyle.