Friday, I cooked a stew. I bought a 2 lb roast on sale, a $1.00 cheaper per pound than the stew meat. than other beef cuts. Apparently, that's no longer the case it's priced about the same as many of the steaks and roasts.
I also bought some very small red potatoes...about the size of large grapes that were on sale. I chose those small potatoes to save a bit of work from having to cube a few larger potatoes. My back hurts much, that standing at the kitchen counter for more than 10 minutes is difficult. So I just tossed in those whole reds, then after they cooked, I squished some of them into a mash and poured it back into the stew to help thicken it and add to the flavor.
I made 2 gallons (32 cups) of stew in my stock pot.
Suggested daily sodium: 1,500 mg per day for most adults.
---------some comparison information-------------
My Stew
Ingredients: tiny red potatoes, onion, celery, carrots, peas. corn, mushrooms, and a can of no sodium diced tomatoes, and about 2 cups of low sodium broth. The beef was first rolled in corn starch that had paprika, garlic and a small amount of salt...then browned in olive oil. I used more garlic and paprika in the stew, some Mrs Dash, a very small amount of caraway seeds.
Calories Per Cup: 200 [based upon other stew recipes and adjusting for quantities of veggies/meat]
Sodium level: about *185mg per cup [based upon what I know I added to the stew].
*I figured about 40mg of that comes from the low sodium broth and what occurs naturally in veggies. I added about 1 teaspoon of salt to the cornstarch I rolled the meat in before browning.
I took a look at a popular brand of canned stew, Dinty Moore, out of curiosity:
Dinty Moore
Beef stock, Beef, Potatoes, carrots. Contains 2% or less of Beef fat, Corn flour, Textured Vegetable Protein (Soy Flour, Caramel Color), Salt, Tomato Past, Modified Cornstarch, Potato Starch, Mushroom Extract, (Mushrooms, Maltodextrin), Caramel Color, Disodium Inosinate and Disodium Guanylate, Sugar, Flavoring
Calories per cup: 200
Sodium per cup: 990
Cost Comparison
Dinty Moore: One 20oz can $2.44 (2.5 cups) costs around 98 cents per cup.
My stew: about 25 cents per cup. - being generous with what I paid for all the veggies, meat and spices used in it
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I'm not a health nut by any means, I've just been preparing foods the way I grew up eating. I rarely eat stuff out of cans, or frozen entrees, rarely eat cold cereal for breakfast...etc. It takes a little more time to fix some things, but I think it's worth it.
My list of ingredients for my stew has no artificial coloring in it and a good variety of fresh vegetables that you can see with each spoonful. The canned stuff has 2 veggies (potatoes and carrots) with some other 'veggy flavors' added via pastes, extracts, starches, and 'flavoring'...whatever that is suppose to be comprised of.
When I'm in the checkout lane at the store, I'm always kind of shocked at how many people have cans, and frozen stuff in their cart and no 'real food' at all...no veggies, no fruits and not a lot of meat, other than things like hot dogs or sandwich meats.
Also those non refrigerated entrees... I always have to wonder what the heck did they do to the meat in those things were they can be stored in plastic on shelves for months and the meat doesn't rot. I'll buy canned things upon occasion and I get about 4 cans of things (usually a can of beans, peas, peaches, and soup) from the food bank once a month...but I won't touch those non refrigerated entrees...lol.
It's getting harder and harder to be thrifty though...the price of fresh veggies and fruit just get higher and higher as does meat - but my disability payments aren't keeping up with it. But in cooking like 2 gallons at a time and putting most of it in the freezer, I can take advantage of the sale prices.
Stormy
