First, a little follow up on the Kahlua experiment--
My first attempt to drain out the coffee grounds was with a coffee filter, which I thought made sense. What I didn't take into account was the sugar that was dissolved into the water & alcohol, which pretty much made the coffee filter useless. Chalk one up for experience.
We cheated a little and did a taste test with real Kahlua & the stuff we made, and I have to say that I like ours better--and I'm sure that isn't just influenced by all the time I have sunk into this now. Of course, to make a chocolate martini with the stuff, I had to mix in some cocoa powder, but that worked & it's legal as well. Maybe a future experiment with cocoa & vodka???????
And on another note, yesterday I made a large batch of spaghetti sauce using home-canned tomato sauce & tomatoes, frozen pumpkin puree, and dehydrated tomatoes & green peppers (last year's garden really did itself proud yesterday). I simmered & simmered and tasted & just couldn't figure out what it was missing--and then finally it hit me........salt.
The biggest adjustment to cooking with homemade things....stock, tomatoes....is the serious reduction in salt. I always knew there was a lot of salt in commercially canned foods, but I guess I didn't realize that it wasn't actually necessary. The directions for canning tomatoes said to add lemon juice to the tomatoes--not salt. (Tomatoes are an acidic food, but not quite acidic enough to guarantee safety when water-bath canning, so the lemon juice raises the acidity level.) Never does it mention adding salt, so my question is....why? Why is there so much salt in commercial foods? According to an article I found on the Mayo Clinic website, it's mostly about flavor, which makes sense in canned soup and other ready-to-eat items, but don't most of us add canned tomatoes TO something--like sauce--that we're going to flavor anyway? Granted, I don't have high blood pressure or any heart disease issues, but it does make me wonder how much sodium I would normally be consuming. Don't get me wrong--I am a salt person & given the choice between potato chips (which are legal, but fattening) and any sweet, I would take the chips in a second, but I don't over-salt things--or I didn't think I did--but now I'm not so sure. I do generally add salt when I'm cooking and if I use ingredients that already have salt added, how much salt am I actually consuming in a day? And does it matter? Again, according to the Mayo Clinic's website, excess sodium is potentially risky if I were over 50 (not even close), black (my passport photo was rejected for being too pale--a first for the folks at Kinkos as they kindly pointed out), or if I had a health condition such as high blood pressure, chronic kidney disease or diabetes--which I don't. So maybe it isn't a big issue, but after 3 1/2 months of this experiment, I am starting to really get cranky about having things in my food that don't need to be there.
3 comments:
Thanks for the Kahlua update - I think it's neat that homemade is better...
Salt...salt is everywhere. I am surprised it's not in coffee, tea, and milk.
I'm a salt person, too, but lately I have noticed that raw food (carrots, grape tomatoes, etc.) doesn't need it - the salt actually obscures the natural flavors - but cooked food needs *something*. This winter I grew fresh herbs inside, so I have been relying on them instead. Oh, and doesn't Pepsi have salt in it? And softened water? Like corn syrup, it's hard to avoid.
My instructions for canning tomatoes always asks for 1 tsp. salt per quart for canning tomatoes or 1/2 tsp per pint. That is not a high amount of sodium and it definitely takes care of the salt issue.
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