Get the Salt Out (7 page)

20
Buy a set of good, sharp knives
to facilitate easy slicing and dicing of fresh ingredients. When you’re venturing into low-salt cooking, the last thing you want is frustration during food preparation because your knives are more of a hindrance to you than a help. Appetizing low-salt cooking largely depends on using abundant, flavorful, chopped fresh produce, so purchase the best set of knives that you can.

21
Or get a food processor
to make food preparation even easier. Whether you need to chop, grate, puree, or blend, a food processor will help you do the work in virtually no time.

22
A blender
is also a handy tool for whipping up quick vegetable-and herb-based sauces and salad dressings that are so tasty you’ll forget all about the salt-laden instant varieties.

23
Try using waterless cookware,
the cookware I use. Waterless cookware will help you get not only the salt out of the foods you cook, it will help you get the sugar and fat out as well. The cookware’s amazing design allows food to cook in its own juices at a constant 180 degrees—the temperature that kills off
E. coli,
salmonella, and other unwanted microorganisms but allows all of the vitamins, minerals, and natural flavors to remain. To cook the most delicious and easiest salt-free foods you’ve ever tasted, treat yourself to a Royal Prestige cooking set.
To order or to get more information, call Uni Key, which is listed in the Resources section.

24
A wide-mouthed thermos
is helpful for taking low-sodium soups, stews, and leftovers to work with you. When you have warm soup from home all ready to eat, you have instant fast food that’s both economical and healthful.

25
Invest in a good pepper mill.
Fresh-ground pepper always perks up salt-free food more than preground pepper.

BONUS TIP:
According to Paul Pitchford, author
Healing with Whole Foods
(North Atlantic Books, 1993
),
freshly ground pepper is more desirable than commercial ground pepper for another reason: commercial ground pepper is roasted, a process that makes the pepper become an irritant to the system. When you grind whole fresh peppercorns in a pepper mill, you avoid this problem.

26
Consider getting a spice grinder,
a small, hand-turned mill that allows you to make freshly ground herb seeds, spices, and seasoning blends of all types. Remember: the fresher the flavor in your food, the less you’ll miss salt.

27
Speaking of flavor, a mortar and pestle
are musts for bringing out the peak taste and aroma of herbs and spices. It takes slightly more time to crush herbs and spices than to use ready-made ground seasonings, but the extra flavor can’t be beat.