One night I was thinking that straight hair is a lot of
effort. There was a time when teenage girls went through an inordinate amount
of effort for straight hair. They’d wrap their hair around their heads. Roll
their hair with large orange juice cans. Put chemicals in it. And before there
were flat irons, there were ordinary steam irons to press those wrinkles out of
one’s head. It’s amazing we had hair left on our head after some of those
antics for straight hair.
During one unbearable hot and humid southern summer, I
decided to embrace “the frizz”. It just
wasn’t worth the energy because try as I might, my straight hair was going to
frizz the moment it collided with humidity.
Another interesting phenomenon took place with all that
humidity, or so I thought. My legs began to resemble those of the dining room
table. My wedding band was too small and this went on for a few years with
dining room table legs and chubby fingers. “A woman of your age” is what the
doctors would tell me. Okay, so I wasn’t 25 years old anymore, I get it.
One day at work, I experienced my first dizzy episode. Not a
breakfast eater until mid-morning, I attributed my dizziness as low blood sugar
and grabbed a cereal bar. “Busy Frizzy’s” dizzy episodes began to occur more
frequently, were lasting longer and becoming embarrassingly unpredictable.
After three years of this mysterious malady, the problem was
diagnosed as too much sodium in my body. As in, over the top, off the charts,
too much sodium. All my “healthy eating” was poisoning me. While I was watching
fat and fiber content, I was not giving any mind to sodium. What I’d discovered
was that the lower the fat and high fiber content in prepared foods, the higher
the sodium levels.
The hot and humid southern summers still manage to send my
hair into a frizz but my legs are looking better. Not exactly the legs of a
piano but no longer the dining room table. And while I still embrace the frizzy
hair and life continues to keep me busy, some tweaking in my food preparation
has eliminated the dizzy from my life. “Busy” is still frizzy but no longer
dizzy.
SOUND THE BUGLE! Today’s tip: Beans are a great source of
protein and fiber in the diet. However, canned beans, even when rinsed, contain
a large amount of sodium. Dried beans in a bag contain no sodium. For the price
of a can of beans, you can purchase a one-pound bag of dried beans. The yield will
be 3X the amount of beans for the same price as one can.
Dried beans, when
soaked overnight, can be frozen and cooked at a later time or can be cooked and
then frozen. If you forget to soak overnight, cover in water before you leave
for work and cook them in the evening while helping the children with homework.
I use 1/3 of the beans that day and freeze the remaining beans. It’s healthy,
it’s frugal as it saves time and money.
I store my beans on the kitchen counter. One day, I combined all my beans to make my own 16-bean soup recipe! Mine was an 11-bean soup and just as tasty as the store-bought version without all the sodium.
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