Daily Breakfast

I've been eating the same 2 things for breakfast everyday for the past few months. The first is what I call my "Open Face Breakfast Sandwich", which includes:

• 1 egg (I like organic brown eggs)
• 1 small red or white potato
• grated parmesan cheese - 90 mg sodium/2 tsp
  
• black pepper
• salt substitute
• chili pepper flakes
• 1 slice bread (I use a whole grain brown bread) - 95 mg sodium/slice
  

Recipe

• Heat a some olive oil in a small frying pan over low to medium heat (enough to coat the bottom)
• Slice the potato into thin, long strips and put into pan (make sure all strips are touching pan)
• Sprinkle some chili pepper flakes onto potatoes (to taste)
• When potatoes are browned on one side, flip them over and crack the egg over the top (potatoes should be arranged in a loose grouping, so that eggs covers them)
• Sprinkle the salt substitute & black pepper over the egg (to taste), and enough of the parmesan cheese to make a thin layer over unbroken yolk & rest of egg
• After a few minutes, flip entire egg/potato over without breaking yolk, and brown on yolk side
• Toast bread
• Remove egg/potato mix from pan and blot with paper towel (should come out of pan as one cohesive unit).
  
• You can put the mix onto the toast as is, or sometimes i like to spread a little mustard or hummus onto the toast before putting the egg mix on
• Ready to eat!

I eat this with a small bowl of cereal, with a one sliced up banana & Rice Dream Organic Original flavor rice milk (lactose intolerant). My cereal of choice is Nature's Path Organic Pumpkin Flax Plus Granola (25 mg sodium/half cup). The rice milk is lower in sodium than the soy milks that I've seen (100 mg sodium/cup). I know that for normal eaters, this doesn't sound very appetizing, but it's actually pretty good. Trader Joe's has the cereal for between $2 to $3. At Gelsons they charge around $5 for the same product. The rice milk is around $1.99.

If you do search for flax seeds, you'll see that one of its benefits is that it helps lower blood pressure. Same goes for bananas, because of their potassium content (I always load up on bananas before my Dr. visits!).

Back on the Meds

I went for my check up back in April, and my BP was a little too high for my Dr.'s liking, so I was put back on meds. Luckily it's only 1/2 pill per day of a water pill (Maxide), unlike before when I was taking 1 water pill + 1/2 Atenolol per day. My BP was 149/85.

I know that I've slacking on my low-sodium diet, eating out way too much. Since then I've been trying to cook at home more, and eat out only once or twice a month. That restaurant food has so much sodium! I guess if you watch the Food Network you do notice that all of the chefs are pretty liberal with the salt.

This past week I had my first follow-up appointment since being back on the meds. My BP had gone down to 138/70. The Dr. said I can come back in 4 months instead of 3, and if I can get my systolic (top #) down below 130 and maintain it there, we can talk again about getting off the meds (and of course keep the diastolic down around 70). I need to come up with some new low-so recipes to keep variety in my diet. Can't eat the same 3 dishes all the time! As I develop new ones I'll try to post them up here on my blog.