Food For Thought

What do you do when you get a devastating diagnosis?

I'm Penna Dutch. Our love language is feeding people. What do you do when you don't even know what to feed yourself?

As I'm typing this, I'm six plus years post-diagnosis. Normally, when you're diagnosed with diabetes, you're told that you have to avoid sugar. The Craving Triad that has evolved in our system – salt, fat, sugar – can be quite wicked. A normal body can gravitate towards the others when one point is removed, and most diabetics will immediately load up on extra salt and fat.

But when you're concurrently diagnosed with congestive heart failure, and that's what really almost killed you, then salt's off the table too. Take it from me – you're screwed.

I had two different dieticians giving me conflicting information: Milk's perfectly fine! Milk's horrible, never drink it! Cheese is fine! No it's not, too much salt! Veggies are perfect! Nooo, no corn or peas or potatoes! Sure, eat bananas, plenty of potassium! No, too much sugar, never eat them!

After three freaking days of this, I told them I'm locking them in a room, and they were not to come out till they could give me a real diet I could maintain. Funny, neither came back. I was on my own.

The doc said, “You can only take in a thousand milligrams of salt a day. No more. And only two liters of all liquids per day.” Then, under his breath, muttered, “Knock a zero off that salt number.”

Cue my very determined, very stubborn mom.

Poor Mom! See, the docs told her that I was about two days from keeling over dead. They didn't tell me till much later in the week, after they drained sixty-five pounds of fluid from my body. I thought I had two weeks or so – nope, my skin was juuust about to start splitting open from the pressure. I was that close.

I claim that Mom stole my clothes to keep me in the hospital. No, not really, I actually gave them to her. I had to. I loathe hospitals, and would have checked myself out if the clothing stayed. So they went home with Mom, and the temptation went with them. The idea of my hoofing it down a major highway in a hospital gown with the “afterburners” waving in the wind was more loathsome than the alternative. Even if I broke a piece of expensive electronic equipment each day, because my body hates electronics. Oops?

Mom went shopping, and nearly had a breakdown in the middle of the store. She told me that she stopped, rotated in a circle, looking at the aisles and aisles of food radiating away from her in all directions, and wondered in despair, “But what can she eat?” Every package she picked up had salt amounts way off my charts.

With both the salt and sugar points taken away from the Craving Triad, there was only one thing left – good ol' fat. And with a CHF diagnosis, that would lead to a sure heart attack.

I was terrified to eat. Lunches for a month were three teaspoons of tuna fish, barely moistened with a touch of mayonnaise, on five low-salt crackers.

It took me two months to get into diabetic nutrition classes, and Mom glued herself to my side as my designated assistant. It was good for getting diabetic information, but sure enough, most of their recommendations were foods that would jack up my salt intake, and put me right back in the hospital.

Honestly, there was only one solution: cook my own. From the freshest ingredients I could get.

Mom and I hunted all the grocery store chains. At one, we found no-salt-added canned veggies. At another, the lowest salt chicken breasts, not brined or injected in any way. At the local farmer's market, 97% lean ground beef.

I lived on chicken veggie soups and occasional burgers without buns. It gets old fast. I'm still “tuna'd out,” as we call it, when we really can't stand to look at one more morsel of a food we've seen more than enough of in the last year. Or five.

At least we can vary the soups enough that I have enough different tastes to keep going. For instance, the one me and my hubby just made was tomato-heavy, but the one before that was with potatoes and milk and lemon juice, and some mashed potato flakes for thickener.

But dangit, I really miss certain ethnic foods.

Chinese, Thai, Korean? Cajun? Dangit. Everything bagels? Yep, just no. I made my own seed mix that I put on the cream cheese on plain bagels, that's about as close as I can get.

I really miss some cheeses.

I've gotten my normal food intake down to 825mg of salt a day, and half of that is cheese. Dang good for a person who wondered how I would survive! And I'm holding, weightwise and A1C. I have to make sure I don't pig out on the complex carbs, so I only occasionally have bread and pasta - unless it's gluten-free rice pasta.

But, oh, I missed mac and cheese! And forget chicken alfredo, my ultimate comfort food, the fat and salt were stratospheric.

And then, this recipe stumbled across my feed:

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/one-pot-creamy-mushroom-and-spinach-orzo

Look, I'm not a great cook. I've been thrown out of five kitchens. My cooking hasn't killed anyone – yet.

But necessity's a mother... of invention, of course. (What were you thinking? Ah, well, you were right.) My husband can cook, I really can't. I'm amazing at spicing, though, so we pool our talents. I'm also good at reading off the pieces of the recipe as hubby assembles and preps and fries up stuff, and I'll sneak in under his arms and add ingredients while he's doing stirring or adding even other ingredients. It works, in a strange and magical married way.

And we do love heavy spicing to give things flavor, without adding any spice salts.

So I stared at this recipe. Could I make this work?

Firstly, the spinach had to go. I love spinach, don't get me wrong – but only in its raw state. As soon as one cooks it, it loses its “sure, this is food” status.

I can spice our soups. We got over our fear of salmon, and learned to pan-fry it, and even bake it. Could I do this? Adapt a recipe to my dietary needs?

We experimented. We cooked. We ate. We survived the experience. We lived to improve the recipe! We added ingredients!

What did we create?

BEHOLD!

Very Low-Salt Orzo Alfredo With Mushrooms, Chicken, Broccoli, and Cauliflower!

*****

Ingredients:

splash of olive oil

1 pound of fresh mushrooms, preferably a mix of types (We use criminis, shiitakes, and buttons)

1 box orzo (16 oz.)

1/2 box of no-salt-added chicken stock (32oz / 4 cups)

2 cups whole milk or heavy cream

1 bag (18.8 oz.) of frozen broccoli and cauliflower, microwavable in bag

2 teaspoons garlic powder (we add a lot more, but like I said, we're used to heavy spicing)

2 teaspoons Italian seasoning blend (see note above)

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

1 cup parmesan cheese

1 shredded chicken breast, cooked (when we make our soups in a giant crock pot, we cook three chicken breasts in it, but only shred two and add them back in. The third we put in the fridge for a curry or chicken parmesan sandwich, or this recipe)

sprinkling of pine nuts

*****

Directions:

Heat up olive oil in a large frying pan with steep sides

Cut up 1 pound of shrooms into 1/4" slices, toss into heated pan, reduce with 1/4 tsp black pepper

Add a little water while reducing, if they get too dry

Add 1 box of orzo and a lot of garlic powder and Italian seasoning

Sauté the dry pasta for about a minute

Add 2 cups chicken stock and 2 cups milk, stir well, bring to boil covered, about 5 minutes on medium heat on our stove. (We've also been known to just use half a box of stock and a pint of heavy cream instead if we're craving more creaminess)

Reduce to simmer, uncover, stir occasionally for 10 minutes to let liquid thicken to a cream sauce (trust me, it will, that pool o' liquid those shrooms are floating in will vanish)

Nuke up (microwave, I'm such a child of the eighties) a bag of frozen broccoli and cauliflower (we use the Steam Fresh brand from Birdseye for ease of use)

Add 1 cup grated parmesan cheese, and the broccoli and cauliflower

Add shredded chicken, stir, let it all blend

Resist the urge to just inhale it right from the pot, you'll burn yourself

Ladle some out, sprinkle some pine nuts on top

Now you can inhale it, please don't burn your mouth

This recipe makes 8-10 servings. Yes, we eat it for lunch for a week when we make it, because NOM.

*****

Sometimes we'll start by frying up half an onion, then add the shrooms. It just depends on how you feel about onion that day.

If you're truly feeling decadent, a drop or two of truffle oil at the end makes the flavors POP.

*****

Honestly, I wish I could convey to you just how emotionally balancing making this recipe felt to me. With a life-changing diagnosis, it's like you lose chunks of your future all at once. Restaurants are a thing of my past, and that puts a mighty big damper on travel. And with the dueling nutritionist debacle, well, enough said about that mess. This recipe shifted my perspective. Is a new, more boring diet better than dying? Sure, but it's still pretty gut-wrenching. Achieving this recipe made me feel as if, maybe, I could get back some other foods in my life - if I was careful and read salt amounts with a magnifying glass.

I got hope back.

The first time I fed it to my parents, I could see the relief in both of them, that I wasn't reduced (pun intended) to tasteless, boring foods for the rest of my life. Or until I snapped, gorged on all the forbidden foods, and had to live with messing up my life all over again. They had seconds and thirds - unheard of! We fought over the leftovers, which if you knew my parents, is the rarest thing. Mom didn't cry, but it was close. She remembered what I looked like, lying in that hospital bed, knowing how close I was to dying.

Since then, this specific recipe gave me the courage to try and find new recipes for other foods that I've missed and have longed for. I've gotten back low-salt macaroni and cheese, red curry, mushroom pizza, and stir fry. We've also got an egg rice recipe that's quite nice, but I think still needs some tweaking. Many more are being researched – up next is beef stroganoff.

Mom and Dad steal my leftovers for the mac and cheese, too. My bestie's full celiac, and we adapted the mac and cheese recipe to rice noodles, and she's so happy! Mom found gluten-free orzo, and it's already packed for our next trip to visit her and give her alfredo back.

My diet is no longer a trap, nor do I have to force myself to eat bland foods just to keep going. I have flavor back, and more importantly, I feel like I have a bit of control over my food intake that I've missed since being diagnosed. I enjoy meals again, and eating with friends and family. No one has to cater to my diet, but I can certainly bring portions for myself and join people for a meal instead of forcing anyone else to bend over backwards for my restrictions. Now that my taste buds have adjusted, I don't even miss the extra salt – in fact, most commercial foods taste like I'm licking a salt block. I can pack meals or ingredients and travel again, and microwaves are a friend.

If you'd like to talk tips about food and recipes, or adjusting this recipe to what you need, touch base with me in the comment section.

Try it, see if it works for you!