And about all that hot air…

Unlike Mikey – the one who “hates everything” in that old 1970s cereal commercial –  Nyel has seldom met a food he wouldn’t eat.   In this household, the words to live by have always been “Nyel eats anything.”  But… under the heading of ‘S*** Happens’…  now, not so much.

I think the deal breaker is salt.  Actually, no salt.  Not ‘lo salt’ as in all those lying snack foods and not that old standby ‘no salt added’ when cooking from scratch.  Try no sodium chloride at all.  As he has been told in the hospital many times, he is apparently salt sensitive which means that even a little is a dangerous thing.

Unadulterated and Barely Edible

The knee-jerk response to that, of course, is that your body requires a certain amount of salt.  True.  But almost all foods contain some.  Even celery for heaven’s sake!  One stalk, medium (7-1/2 to 8 inches long) 32 milligrams.  One wedge of cantaloupe ( 1/8 of a medium-size melon) 88 milligrams. Who knew?

Somehow, it stands to reason that razor clams, being a seafood, contain sodium but, 64 milligrams in four ounces of fresh clam (about one of medium size) seems extreme.  Especially when you consider that, for me anyway, five or six fried clams at a sitting seems about right.  Once upon a time, Nyel could put away a dozen, no problem.

Fowl Treat

The recommended allowance of sodium for congestive heart failure patients is no more than 2,000 milligrams  each day; less than 1,500 mg a day is ideal.  That’s one-and-a-half to two grams per day.  It’s easy to see the problem and for a foodie sorta guy, it’s really tough.

Last night he tried out the handy-dandy Air Popper that Santa brought for Christmas.  In nothing flat it spewed four quarts of popcorn from ½ cup of kernels (1 milligram sodium per cup of air-popped corn).   Big, white, fluffy, inedible popcorn.  The next time he’ll try adding some melted unsalted butter (2 milligrams sodium per tablespoon) plus garlic powder and some Mrs. Dash which are both sodium-free.

Meanwhile, Farmer Nyel has several days’ worth of treats for his girls in the coop!