Heart healthy eating

Is there a decent sous vide machine that can fit in a compact (read: apartment) kitchen? Always wanted to give it a try.

First, Sous Vide is worth doing and yes, you can get a machine that will fit in a tiny space, as long as you already have pots and pans. The one I use clips onto a pot and that is the vessel that the SV unit controls. I sometimes use a pot but mostly a larger cooler (18 quart?) or a cambro container, both tops of which I cut to fit the unit semi snugly. Tonight I SVed a bunch of venison steaks that were given to me. I had done the thorough cooking 6 months ago and had them in their bags in the freezer. Today I remembered them and 1 hr in the SV bath brought them right to where they should be with no loss of quality. A draining, then sprinkling with dextrose, and hit them with the torch got me "grilled" venison when the grill is under a ton of snow. SV is tailor made for steaks with no marbling... ie: game meat. They had great grilled meat flavor, were moist, and delicious. If I was single today I would definitely have SV in my repertoire to impress the ladies with the food quality. And what guy doesn't like showing off with fire even if it's a butane torch?

Just don't do as my brother did and buy the SV machine, cook some steaks to a perfect med' rare and not brown them. That's boiled beef and doesn't have the flavor. get reducing sugar onto the meat and brown it (torch) to get the Maillard reaction to occur. A little sodium Bicarb helps the browning, but I can no longer use it due to the sodium. I pick and choose my sodium exposure today. But normal folks can use the sod' bicarb' along with the sugar.

Not only does it work with lean game, but it works with much lesser cuts of beef. I can take unmarbled, tough, beef and turn it into something that if your eyes were closed, you'd swear was the best beef fillet. I do that regularly with lesser cuts of roast so that I can get roast beef cold cuts that I can eat w/o sodium. It also gives me the option to spice it up as I wish. The last batch of roast beef cost us $3.49/lb. If it wasn't tender and delicious I wouldn't bother, but it is. It's not the same size as a commercial cold cut roast beef, but so what? Mine has the flavor I want and it's low sodium. The same product (or similar product) can't be purchased at the deli. Lately if I want sandwich innards I need to make them myself. Chicken salad gets me chicken stock for other uses after the braise. Rare roast beef gets me stock as well in the form of bag juices. As of yet I haven't SVed fish or shrimp. But SVed shrimp in the shells should give an outstanding stock and so would fish pieces SV for the stock. I bet perfectly done SV salmon would be to kill for. No need to torch, just have a great sauce. I need to stop this.

If you do a search for Sous Vide machines or controllers you'll turn up all sorts. I was a part of the Sansaire funding and that's what I still use. It works fine but there are smaller and maybe better priced units today.

First, Sous Vide is worth doing and yes, you can get a machine that will fit in a tiny space, as long as you already have pots and pans. The one I use clips onto a pot and that is the vessel that the SV unit controls. I sometimes use a pot but mostly a larger cooler (18 quart?) or a cambro container, both tops of which I cut to fit the unit semi snugly. Tonight I SVed a bunch of venison steaks that were given to me. I had done the thorough cooking 6 months ago and had them in their bags in the freezer. Today I remembered them and 1 hr in the SV bath brought them right to where they should be with no loss of quality. A draining, then sprinkling with dextrose, and hit them with the torch got me "grilled" venison when the grill is under a ton of snow. SV is tailor made for steaks with no marbling... ie: game meat. They had great grilled meat flavor, were moist, and delicious. If I was single today I would definitely have SV in my repertoire to impress the ladies with the food quality. And what guy doesn't like showing off with fire even if it's a butane torch?

Just don't do as my brother did and buy the SV machine, cook some steaks to a perfect med' rare and not brown them. That's boiled beef and doesn't have the flavor. get reducing sugar onto the meat and brown it (torch) to get the Maillard reaction to occur. A little sodium Bicarb helps the browning, but I can no longer use it due to the sodium. I pick and choose my sodium exposure today. But normal folks can use the sod' bicarb' along with the sugar.

Not only does it work with lean game, but it works with much lesser cuts of beef. I can take unmarbled, tough, beef and turn it into something that if your eyes were closed, you'd swear was the best beef fillet. I do that regularly with lesser cuts of roast so that I can get roast beef cold cuts that I can eat w/o sodium. It also gives me the option to spice it up as I wish. The last batch of roast beef cost us $3.49/lb. If it wasn't tender and delicious I wouldn't bother, but it is. It's not the same size as a commercial cold cut roast beef, but so what? Mine has the flavor I want and it's low sodium. The same product (or similar product) can't be purchased at the deli. Lately if I want sandwich innards I need to make them myself. Chicken salad gets me chicken stock for other uses after the braise. Rare roast beef gets me stock as well in the form of bag juices. As of yet I haven't SVed fish or shrimp. But SVed shrimp in the shells should give an outstanding stock and so would fish pieces SV for the stock. I bet perfectly done SV salmon would be to kill for. No need to torch, just have a great sauce. I need to stop this.

If you do a search for Sous Vide machines or controllers you'll turn up all sorts. I was a part of the Sansaire funding and that's what I still use. It works fine but there are smaller and maybe better priced units today.

24 hour London Broil in the meat jacuzzi as we speak.

Yesterday I cooked up a storm. Cherry Sorbet, Mini Pibi sauce ( a recipe converted from the Yucatan), and Potato/Leek soup. Everything as heart healthy as I could make them. The Mini Pibis are supposed to use Masa with lard. I'm skipping that, maybe I'll serve it over Polenta. The P/L soup is totally free of added sodium and has only a minor amount of EVOO for oil, and it's fairly high fiber.

ShadowsDad, try chimichurri as a sauce. I'm not sure whether the salt is needed, but I suppose Nu Salt should do the trick.

I called it a sauce, but in fact it's the major requirement in the mini pibis. Using chimichurri would give me a meal of sauce over masa/lard (which I can't/won't eat). Much less than desirable or edible IMO and not close to the Yucutacan version of what I wanted to make. I don't want chimichurri over rice, one can't live on that for an entree.

To understand what it is, it's basically puerco pibil but made with chicken, not pork. No banana leaves either since I can't find them.

I had to bastardize the recipe greatly to come up with what I made. No masa, no banana leaves, just the chicken sauce over whatever. The achiote paste was my one concession that I wasn't going to do without since it was critical this first time, despite the sodium. I figured I could just use less of a serving. If I make it again I can use annato powder or grind my own annato seeds.

https://patijinich.com/mini-pibis/

If the bastardized recipe doesn't work the dogs will love it even if we don't. The flavor profile is completely foreign to my taste buds. Not bad, just totally different. Today's cooking is totally different from what I've been doing that landed me where I am today. I'm looking for flavor that my body can tolerate. I've had many successes and a bunch of failures. I'm learning.

I still haven't tried any recipes from the "Food over 50" website. I need to do so.

Time to update this thread since I've totally revamped my heart healthy eating. Why?

Years ago a so called study was done where the Dr' cherry picked the 2 test groups. One group would have had better health and lived longer no matter what the test was. The other group were folks who had lifestyles and clearly were unhealthy at the start of the study, and Shazamm(!) at the end of the "study" they had the same lousy test results. Guess which group was fed the Sat' fat and cholesterol? Hint: the DR wanted a specific test result, it being to "prove" dietary fats were evil. If you guessed the unhealthy group you get a prize! No modern study, done reputably (The first study was a fraud) today has ever verified the fraudulent studies results, the suggestion from genuine studies hints at just the opposite effect of eating fats to be real. But the dullard lemmings in the media latched onto that study and repeated it. Commercials today bombard us with eating low fat, and it's common knowledge that dietary fats cause problems in the blood and cause heart disease. I've had a keen interest in the subject since the diagnosis of my heart disease. I even turned myself into a guinea pig to test what I'd been finding.

The competing theory of heart disease at the time of the 1st study was that carbs cause heart disease. The gent who had the carb' theory wasn't listened to due to the release of the first study. We know today that dietary fats are NOT the evil that we were told they were. There is evidence that dietary fats actually drive down LDL. Too, not all fats are bad (If one subscribes to the theory) but we were told that ALL fats were. All fats are different and not the same. Some are quite beneficial.

Where am I going with this? What I was told about sodium isn't incorrect, I just took it too far. People on ultra low sodium diets have an 80% chance of recurring heart disease. Now I don't eat any fast food or eat out at all, nor do I count grams of sodium. I have pretty much always cooked my own food and I eat sensibly. The new approach nets me between 1000-1500mg/day of sodium. I don't trust my taste buds for sodium since they simply can't be trusted. I know what I added to the food.

As far as diet I've been in ketosis for at least 3 months now. That means eating meat, veggies, and fats; little to no carb' consumption. OK, a little aside to understand how the human body works... We evolved as hunter gatherers. Carbs were available at times, but not the way they are today at every meal. Carbs don't store well, but there is a storage mechanism for them in the body. They are also fast energy. Fats are the superior energy source and store really great. What the body does is stores fat for lean times, and it will actually burn more energy than it gets from some carbs to obtain carbs. Carbs get burned by the body immediately. That's why someone eating carbs gets hungry in a few hours and needs to eat again. When one burns fats hunger isn't an issue due to the stores of body fat, plus it's a much better source of energy. Carbs are also thought by top cardiologists today to contribute to heart disease. So I'm in ketosis and plan to stay here for quite some time. Lots of folks use keto as a weight loss diet and that's part of my plan as well. But to lose weight it's still calories in vs calories burned. I'm losing weight slowly, again, by plan. I've lost 35 pounds and intend to lose another 30#. My clothes are fitting quite loosely and I figure they'll fit me like burlap sacks when I reach my goal.

Staying in ketosis isn't easy. I was raised eating carbs as most of us were and I have the cravings. I didn't get to be a great baker by not loving bread. I miss my fruit. But if it's starch or sugar... well any starch is ultimately sugar due to our digestion making it so, I stay away from it. I've had to learn to cook and eat all over again. I discussed keto with a Dr just last week and she mentioned how difficult it was to do, they do Paleo since it's easier. I know of no one who is on keto long term. Of the people I've discussed it with I'm the only person who has been on it as long as I have, maybe my circle of folks I talk to is small, maybe.

That brings up Thanksgiving Day meal. I can do everything either Keto or dodging the parts of the dish that contains carbs. The item that I must have, non negotiable, is gravy on my dressing. But I found a way to make gravy without using flour or starch. Xanthan gum did the job. I've been using it to get a feel for how it works in hot cocoa, and learned immediately that a little goes a very long way. My first mug of HC you could have stood a spoon up in. It was delicious, but far too thick and slimey. My first try at using it for gravy was successful, so Thanksgiving meal will be a success from my perspective. All the other dishes are easy. I'll make a pan of yeast rolls for the wife, and if I do that I'll allow myself 1/2 of one. I'll also make for myself a biscuit using a low carb flour (Carbquik). There will be other dishes I won't go into here.

Oh, I mentioned that I turned myself into a guinea pig to test the new heart data and diet. I timed going into ketosis so that after a reasonable time I would get scheduled blood tests done. For months I was the poster boy for everything "bad" on a low fat diet. I continued taking my statin to control the LDL production of my liver. At the end of those months I had my blood tested and the numbers were 78/48 (LDL/HDL). Those numbers very much mimic my numbers from a year before.

I'm not going to state that I'm on keto for life, but I toy with the notion of going back onto a carb' consuming diet after I reach my goal and I'm just not hot to do that. Maybe I can force myself onto it for a week to see what I've been missing, but the thought doesn't really interest me, maybe in a year it will but for now it doesn't. For Thanksgiving I had a retired nurse at cardiac rehab suggest I leave ketosis for that day, but I rejected that out of hand. I can stay in ketosis and enjoy the meal and the wife will too. I had her taste things along the way as I was learning to cook keto to make sure it would work.

I'll be around to say it again, but have a great Thanksgiving Day everyone!

Anyone wanting more info' regarding diet and the latest studies (w/o the BS), "Food: WTF Should I Eat?" , by Dr Hyman is excellent. He makes no friends and lots of enemies by telling the truth that others won't even utter quietly.

Good luck with the Keto diet, Brian.
I tried it for over 9 months, a few years ago, but being so active, playing soccer and riding my bike to work, was quite a challenge for me as my body doesn't enjoy diary, so cream and cheese were out.
My diet was quite limited and I lost more weight than I wanted as I was/am quite lean, as it is. I just couldn't get enough calories throughout the day.
I have gone back to eating more carbs, but I only eat organic white basmati rice or organic yams and sweet potatoes and I feel much better and have even gained weight.
The funny thing is that I have gone back to a mainly vegetarian diet and I have noticed that my body doesn't exhibit as much pain as when I was consuming quite a bit of meat.
It is interesting and complex how the body works.

Update: still in ketosis and loving it. I wonder how I ate so much food in years past and didn't look like a blimp. But fat is a much better energy source than carbs.

I'm getting close to my target so I'm starting to make "fat bombs" to find what I like and what works for me. My Dr' suggested he Rx me an appetite suppressor which I turned down. Folks who lose weight rapidly never learn what's required to keep it off and I don't want that to be me. So I'll lose slowly and when I get to where I want to be I'll know how to maintain it.

FWIW, being in ketosis is like any other eating in that it's calories in vs calories burned. I want to get to 160ish pounds and maintain there. So what do I eat when between meals after I've burned calories? I can't eat a candy bar or a Larabar or some such due to the carbs. The answer is a fat bomb. I love chocolate. Since I burn fat and chocolate is fat I can eat it and do. I just need to keep track of the carbs if it isn't keto chocolate (eventually I'll make my own). But one serving of adult chocolate is OK, Like the Lindt 70%. This is my intro to the fat bombs I made yesterday. They are a keto version of a chocolate Crunch or Crackle bar. The crunchies are protein puffs, the fat is mainly butter and coconut oil, there is cocoa powder, and erythritol is the sweetener. They were easy to make and tasty. My wife stated that she doesn't like the commercial version but liked what I made. My chocolate of choice gives me more carbs and no protein. The homemade bars have fewer carbs, a decent source of protein, and more fat. It's designed to be eaten in ketosis and shows it. I won't eat these now though since I want to lose more eight and don't want to maximize fat. I'll reserve them for exactly what they are for, after a match, or some such other energy expenditure, I'll eat one to regain energy for the drive home.

Fat bombs are going to be fun. There are many I have yet to try.

I don't know if I mentioned it but since I burn fat now I can eat ice cream too. There are some pretty decent keto versions available today and I have 1/4- 1/3 pt every night along with my chocolate. It's a rough diet (meaning the food we eat and not a "diet" as in something in print and to be rigidly adhered to). I've found T-Shirts online that state "I burn bacon" or some such. Once I get to my target weight and size I intend to get a few. Yes, I can make my own keto ice cream, I just haven't done so yet. I can eat cream.

My diet consists of lots of veggies, protein, and fat. The protein can contain the fat, as in bacon, sausage, full fat cheese, marbled steak, eggs, the list goes on and on. The hard part is learning how to "eat keto" when beginning. I still miss fruit, bread, and pasta. But sugar, which all of that turns into in the body, is as or more addictive than opiates. When I don't eat the required fat on any given day I lose body weight. The body just does what it needs to do to keep running.

I just had a GI flu and didn't eat anything for days (4?). The wife was on me to eat something, but what she didn't know was that while I was sick and was hurting, I still had energy and no need to eat. My body just used what I had stored with no need to eat anything for energy.