Crock Pot Express Crock Multi-Cooker

Phil, you have no idea how often we discuss food in cardiac rehab. That looks delicious, at least from the pic and your description.

The rest is not for you Phil, but is intended only in a general sense to the forum. I'm astounded that after $120k spent on re-piping ones heart there are folks who still eat a ribeye every week and call it a treat. I try to stay under 500mg sodium per day (2 slices of store bought bread will pretty much be my 500mg) and I try to stay away from any dietary cholesterol, sat' fat, or trans fat. Pretty much if I don't make it I can't/won't eat it. There are some exceptions and I've gotten to be an expert label reader (I thought I was, but I was a fool!) . Today I had to black mail my wife, and told her that I was either going to have a slice pf pizza or why the hell was I doing my diet !!?? I'd go off it and just enjoy my food and croak in 10-12 years. I stay on my diet because I want to, and I don't treat myself all that often but I really miss pizza. I make a really delicious pizza but I won't make it anymore due to the sodium and dairy, and it just wouldn't be the same with substituted ingredients. But one slice once a month isn't too much to ask. We've been testing the various pizzarias locally, or at least that's my intent. So far the one we've been giving our business to for years is the best.

I have to tell you that it sux to have heart disease and do everything right AFTER finding out. But I thought I was doing everything right for decades. Genetics makes the difference. If I had just done things just slightly different things might have been quite different.

Why do I write this publically? I care. Anyone with a history of heart disease in the family needs to go get it checked and don't assume you're OK because you haven't had a problem yet. I didn't either until I did, neither did other family members after me (my 2 older brothers in consecutive months- we might have gotten a group rate had we only known). There aren't always signs. The heart is sort of necessary and we don't have a spare, so (and trust me on this) it needs to be taken care of. In my life and diet things that I really liked to eat once a day are at best once a week items and then in vastly reduced amounts. Todays slice of pepperoni pizza was a once a month treat. In the past I'd have 2 slices and a salad. Now I can have the salad as frequently as I want but with a "good oil" and vinegar dressing; blue cheese dressing is definitely not on the menu.

Today I'm doing fine (really!*), but I really want others to dodge what happened to me. You DO NOT want to go through this! I live in rural Maine because I like to stay away from civilization but my life has been anything but away from civilization since my event. Even if one enjoys the city you don't want to go through this.

*Today the nurse in cardiac rehab told me that she wanted to use me as the poster child. Not everyone will undergo the pain I'm enduring to get my problems cleared up (claudication therapy - just google it). The alternative for me is to have my femoral artery(s) sliced open and scraped out. I'm not keen on that if I can possess the solution on my own despite the pain. And yes, every time I do the therapy there is pain. You do NOT want to go through this! You do not want to take all of the Rx's that I and the others in cardiac rehab take and need to take for the rest of our lives.

OK that's the end of my rant. I just want the best for my friends and that's why I bared my soul. I'm normally much more reserved unless it's an email to folks I really think that I know.

ShadowsDad ,
Thanks for baring your soul. I really wanted to say "thanks for pouring your heart out" but that seemed tacky

A lot of good info in those paragraphs. On diet, lifestyle choice and motivations.

May be the eye opener some of us need.

Phil

But it would have been humorous Phil!

BTW, I've lost over 30# and want to lose another 30. I'm in no hurry. It took me 5 months to lose that weight, but I lost 10# in the hospital in less than a week. They had me on a low sodium heart healthy diet, but didn't know how to cook it to make it taste like it was worth eating. Basically I starved when I was there. They couldn't even make a tuna fish sandwich that was worth eating. That was the first night. I knew I was in deep doo-doo when they couldn't make that! How hard is it to use mashed avocado instead of mayo? Before I was diagnosed they allowed me lobster rolls and I thought, "Hey, this isn't going to be bad!". Then I was denied that even though lobster is considered heart healthy.

The best meal I ever had there was to order a fruit salad and a chef salad. I ate the fruit from that salad and tossed the lettuce with no dressing, and ate the meat and cheese from the chefs salad, and again tossed the lettuce with no dressing (oilless dressing isn't worth ordering!). That was actually delicious and filling, but by then my stomach had shrunk. I love salad and even a dressing of oil and vinegar would have been good (what I use now), but they only had packets of crap dressing. When I wanted salt my roommate would order extra and he always supplied me. But I didn't use that source very often. Just often enough to prevent the bely buckle from scraping my spine.

It was sorta humorous, (now)... they gave us opiates for pain (which slows down the bowels), which I refused after the first one, then wouldn't give me food that I could eat, and wanted me to have a bowel movement. Just how does that happen!!?? I would order extra fruit and always had a few on the window sill next to me. That's what I lived on. That and Italian ices and ice cream. One night I got caught being up and about raiding the larder and was accosted by one of the nurses (not mine). She asked if I was supposed to be up and walking in the hall. Of course I lied and blustered my way right through it. It must have worked. I didn't know that I wasn't supposed to be walking around but if I had it wouldn't have stopped me. It's better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission and get a "NO".

I went from being a saltaholic, hey what can I say, white northern European ancestry and we crave salt, to using a small fraction of my previous daily intake. Now when I go over 500mg I drink all sorts of water and previously my daily intake was easily over 3000mg on a low salt day. I look at the nutritional data on the foods I would consume and I shake my head over how much salt I had been consuming, and I wasn't consuming just the suggested portion, but much more.

Now I bake my own low sodium bread (since the colder weather is here) and cook my own food from the basic ingredients or things that are "no sodium added", but I'm no stranger to cooking my own food from scratch. I make a killer spaghetti sauce now that only has the sodium that naturally occurs in the tomatoes, and that's very low. But I just can't let go of the hard Italian cheese. Maybe someday that'll happen. "Everything in moderation, even moderation". Some things I just can't do without. But maybe if I wean myself off of it... I just know that it hasn't happened yet. But I haven't even come close to having "just one" rib-eye a week and consider it a treat.

I have yet to cook for others, but when I do I intend to tell them that I will NOT be offended when they reach for the salt shaker.

Love mine and I was using pressure cooker often before, I still like slow rotating but when time is critical I much prefer this type of cookery vs pizza or Chinese take-out.