low sodium eating/diet

Hi everyone! I am 32 years old and was just diagnoised with Cardiomyopathy after having CHF from a virus
that went to my heart. I know have to stick to a low sodium diet. I love to cook but I'm having a hard time
with finding a meal plan to follow and with the measurements. I finding that tracking my sodium intake is more difficult than I thought.

Does anyone have any advise or know of any resources or web sites that might help me with a low sodium diet plan and help me to track my sodium intake? Also does anyone know anything about the DASH diet and if this might be a good plan to follow?

Thanks for everyone's help!

[curmudgen]

Everything you need to know about a DASH diet can be googled....not avoiding answering  you, however you will get more information that way.

[jrbon]

I also cook, and also try to follow a low sodium diet...

What I have done is:

1) Never use salt in my foods
2) With the salt in the bread that I eat, I think it is more than enough.
3) Forget pre-cook foods.
4) Prefer fresh ingredients or frozen ingredients vs canned ones.
5) Check every thing that it is not fresh for sodium content.
6) Forget prepared sauces, they carry too much sodium.

Now some cooking tips:

1) If you change the flavor either to sweet or to hot, you will not realize the lack of salt.
2) Try to get flavor of everything you can ... bones of meat, bones of fish.. by preparing concentrated broths to use in other dishes. I prepare them with mineral water, the chloride that is in the tap water, makes them not to take all the flavor. For the meat broth, first I place the bones in the oven under the grill until almost black, for both of them I add onion, parsley, carrot and bay leaves and leave them to boil slowly for almost 1 hour, then I filter them and use or frozen.
3) Get yourself a good collection of spices.
4) I use fresh grounded yellow mustard and blank pepper as a sort of salt substitute. But also add other species.
5) Never use water in your stews , use some broth or wine instead.
6) Practice marinates dishes.
7) Over fry vegetables (onions, peppers..) to get a sweeter taste.
8) Experiment with all sort of spices (paprika, chilly, cayenne, ginger, cinnamon, coriander, cumin..)
9) Experiment with beer, red and white wine and also sweet wine in your dishes.
10) Try different vinegars and chose the one that you like it more .. use it generously in salads and you will not need salt.
11) Until you get use to this way of cooking, do not use potatoes in your stews, they take too much flavor.

Hope this help.

Jesus

PS: In case you can read Spanish, you can see some of my salt and cholesterol free dishes in my web site:    www.cardiacos.net

[cj0404]

Thank you so much for the info.! It helps me quite a bit. I had no idea about the tab water vs. mineral water. I never paid attention to sodium content before my DX and now that I have to it has been quite the life style change. Thanks again for the tips... I start trying them out ASAP!

Cynthia