Get the Salt Out (31 page)

197
Crumbled feta cheese is a popular salad topper,
but native Greeks will tell you that freshly made feta cheese is never as salty as the packaged feta cheese Americans are accustomed to. You still can enjoy feta cheese on salads; just get most of the salt out of it first. To lower the sodium content of feta cheese, soak the amount of cheese you want to use in low-sodium water for about five minutes, drain it, and lightly pat it dry with a paper towel. Much of the salt will be removed, but the delicious goat-cheese flavor will remain.
One Salt Shaker.

198
To make salad into a meal,
top it with leftover, plain-cooked chicken, turkey, or beef slices, or low-sodium canned tuna.
One Salt Shaker.

199
For a vegetarian alternative,
top salad with low-sodium canned chickpeas.
One Salt Shaker.

200
If you have high blood pressure,
be sure to add chopped celery to your salad. Although celery is one of the highest vegetable sources of sodium, it is still low in sodium. In addition, it has another bonus: it contains a compound called 3-n-butyl phthalide, which is known to lower high blood pressure. Several holistic doctors such as Michael T. Murray, author of
Natural Alternatives to Over-the-counter and Prescription Drugs
(William Morrow and Company, 1994), suggest that hypertensive individuals eat four celery stalks per day.
One Salt Shaker.

201
Transform any leftover vegetables into an elegant salad.
Its easy to do when you follow this recipe from Harriet Roth’s cookbook
Deliciously Low. One Salt Shaker.

Put the vinaigrette dressing in a generous-size jar. Each day, add any leftover bits of raw or cooked vegetables except for salad greens. In a few days, lift the marinated vegetable mixture with a slotted spoon onto fresh lettuce leaves and serve as a delicious salad. You will discover unusual and flavorful mixtures this way.
Yield will vary, based on the amount of vegetables used.

202
Dry mixes for grain salads like tabouli may be easy to use,
but even the packaged brands carried in health food stores contain entirely too much salt. To have some of the convenience dry mixes offer without all that unnecessary sodium, use leftover cooked grains or quick-cooking grains to quickly prepare grain salads. In this recipe, nutritionist Melissa Diane Smith combines quick-cooking bulgur wheat with bountiful fresh ingredients for a real herbal experience: a refreshing Middle Eastern tabouli salad that takes only about 30 minutes to prepare.
One Salt Shaker.