Raita

A quick raita recipe:

250ml natural yoghurt
Half a cucumber, chopped into smallish pieces
A handful of mint, chopped (this is dead easy to grow)

Simply mix it all together. Add some finely chopped green chilli if you want more of a kick.

Pizza Stones

La vegan pizza del diavolo
Originally uploaded by sonicwalker

I got a pizza stone a few weeks and haven't regretted it. It's basically a big slab of stone-like stuff that goes into your oven, and gives you a crispy base like a proper pizza oven. Ours was £10 which isn't bad considering how much you would spend on one takeaway pizza. It also doesn't need washing up which is a bonus - you just scrape it clean.

Of course, the other great thing about pizzas is you can put anything you find in the fridge on them, so they're great for using up leftovers. The only tip I'd give is to use the little mozzarella balls, as they won't have a watery middle like the large ones.

The one I got comes with a metal stand and a pizza slice - I think it's this one:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Kitchen-Craft-Pizza-Stone-12in/dp/B000SM0AS2

We have used it lots for pizza, but also for naan bread too. I need a few more tries until I get the naan right (I'm trying to do it without sodium bicarb) - fresh homemade bread is always delicious, even when it goes a bit wrong, but the recipe could do with more work before I post it here!

Redbournbury Mill

Just wanted to mention Redbournbury Watermill, and their delicious organic spelt flour, which makes me feel like such an earth mother!

http://www.redbournmill.co.uk/

Low Sodium Quick Chicken Saag

This is quick enough to do midweek after work, and sounds like it'll be low in fat as well as low in sodium. You'll need all sorts of spices in your cupboard to do it, but once you have them you'll be able to do lots of other recipes too (and to be honest, you can get away without one of them, I did it without coriander last night and it still tasted great). Serve with basmati rice.

Serves 2

2 skinless chicken breasts, cubed
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves of garlic, sliced (or more if you really like garlic)
400g ish of frozen spinach, or fresh
1/2 tsp ground ginger
1/2 can of crushed tomatoes
1/2 tsp garam masala
1/2 tsp turmeric
1/4 tsp ground coriander
1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
1/4 tsp
1 whole clove
1 cardamom pod
red chilli to taste
a little milk, or yoghurt
black pepper

Saute chicken cubes in a little oil until slightly browned. Set aside. If you're using frozen spinach, cook it as per instructions - fresh spinach won't need pre-cooking.

Saute onions in a little oil until clear, add the garlic for the last minute or so. Add tomatoes, turmeric, ginger, coriander, clove, cardamom pod, pepper and cook for a few more minutes. Add spinach, a splash of water and milk, garam masala, chillies and cook for 10 minutes until nearly all the fluid has gone (or simmer with a lid on until you're ready to eat, I left it on for half an hour and it was fine). If it's too hot for you, add a little yoghurt. If not hot enough, add more chilli :-)

Bread of Heaven...

No-knead bread
Originally uploaded by fuzuoko

...bread of heaven...feed me til I want no moooooooore...

Ah, blurry memories of Welsh weddings come flooding back.

Bread seems generally to be high in sodium - and a lot of it is stealth-salt, that you can't really taste. There's a wide range of sodium contents though, and by shopping carefully you can cut back on your intake drastically. If you eat bread, it's likely to be in biggish quantities, so this is something where you do want the sodium level to be low.

Government guidance on sodium is 2.4g per day. See here for more on this.

Of course bread is something that varies hugely between brands and shops...but a quick scan of the shelves locally shows the following sodium contents per 100g...

High:
Honey seeded wheaten bread (which from the name you would expect to be healthy) - 0.96g
Mini brown rolls - 0.6g

Middling:
Soft white rolls - 0.48g
Cholla - 0.48g
Every day white sliced loaf - 0.47g - this is 0.21g per slice
Part-baked baguettes - 0.45g
Baguette - 0.44g
Ciabatta - 0.4g
Tortilla Wrap - 0.36g
Muffins - 0.34g - that's 0.22g in each muffin
Pitta bread - 0.3g

Low-ish:
Teacakes - 0.17g per 100g - my favourites, good to know

Even better, you can make your own salt-free bread! No really, if I can do it, you can too.

Thanks to fuzuoko for the great photo!

Sources of Potassium

Avocado
Originally uploaded by **Shutterbug Gal**

Potassium counteracts the effects of sodium. It's something to do with the Sodium-Potassium pump, which I can vaguely recall from A level Biology. The FSA page on potassium is here - it seems that increasing your potassium intake can help with lowering blood pressure, as well as decreasing your sodium.

Some foods which are good sources of potassium are:

- fruit and veg (apricots, grapefruit, melon, spinach, kiwi, bananas, peaches and avocados are all good)
- pulses
- nuts and seeds
- milk
- fish and shellfish
- beef, chicken and turkey
- bread

Sausages

once were sausages
Originally uploaded by harri b

Sausages, according to the FSA, are chock full of sodium, and have got worse over the last few years, despite the trend towards healthy eating. Looking around our local supermarkets confirmed this, and Googling "low sodium sausages" etc. came back with nothing in the UK, as per usual.

So today I headed to my local farmer's market in search of low sodium sausages. I spoke to four producers, three of whom admitted to using salt-laden "ready made mixes" of spices and seasonings to make their sausages.

One stallholder admitted that the sausages he was selling were too salty for his taste. One lady selling boar products said she made her own sausage seasoning mix, but it still contained high-sounding levels of salt (although it was a quarter of what was recommended in the recipe she uses). She said, however, that she was happy to provide unseasoned sausage meat for me to use to make my own sausages, should we choose to commit ourselves to shelling out for a sausage maker, or make "patties".

The search continues...

Sauces

Shop-bought sauces tend to contain a lot of sodium...you can see below though that levels vary hugely (by making up your own mustard from powder you can almost totally avoid sodium altogether).

All numbers are g of sodium per 100g.

Mayonnaise:
Tesco Organic 0.4g
Hellmans 0.6g
Tesco 0.6g
M&S Reduced Fat 0.65g
Hellmans Light 0.9g

Mint Sauce:
Tesco Finest with Balsamic Vinegar "Trace"
Sainsbury 0.5g
Colmans 1g

Brown Sauce:
HP Reduced Sugar & Salt 0.6g
Branston 0.9g
Tesco 1.1g
HP 1.0g

Ketchup:
Heinz Reduced Sugar & Salt 0.8g
Branston 1.0g
Tesco 1.2g
Heinz Organic 1.2g

English Mustard:
Colmans Mustard Powder "Trace"
Colmans 3.1g
Tesco 3.3g
Sainsbury 3.3g

Horseradish Sauce:
English Provender 0.1g
Tesco Finest 0.3g
Colmans 0.4g
Tesco Hot 2.8g

Tartare Sauce:
Tesco Finest 0.5g
Stokes 0.6g
Sainsburys 0.8g
Tesco 1.0g
Simply Delicious Organic 1.05g
M&S 1.18g
Colmans 1.3g
Waitrose 1.6g

Dips

Some low/no sodium dips to liven up those salt-free crisps (Tyrells and Kettle Chips both do unsalted versions now; and there's always Salt n Shake too).

Simple Tomato Salsa:
400g tin chopped tomatoes
2 tablespoons lime juice
Red chilli to taste (I keep one of those cheating jars of pre-chopped chilli in the fridge)

Simply mix it all together!

Guacamole:
4 mild chillies, finely chopped
Bunch coriander, chopped
2 tomatoes, finely chopped
1-2 tbsp water
½ lime, juice only
3 ripe avocados

In a pestle and mortar, pound the chillies, coriander and tomatoes to a fine paste. Add a little water and lime juice to make a looser mixture. Mash in the avocados.

Houmous:
Here I'm simply going to link to Joanna's delicious recipe.