Saturday, April 5, 2014

"BUSY FRIZZY" GETS DIZZY

Some nights, my mind won’t shut off. My body may be in park, but my mind is in overdrive.

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.

 
 
 
 
 

No comments:

Post a Comment