Renal Diet Headquarters Podcast 045 – Summer Picnic Ideas For Kidney Disease

Renal Diet Headquarters Podcast 045 – Summer Picnic Ideas For Kidney Disease
Kidney Diet Picnic Foods

Podcast #45 Released on July 8, 2015

Send in your questions about all things related to chronic kidney disease to [email protected]

Great Foods for Grilling

Grilling is one of the healthiest ways to cook your food, as it typically needs no extra fat or flavoring. Just about anything from meats to vegetables and more, can be grilled to perfection easily. Shrimp, salmon, and chicken are kidney friendly favorites.

Lots of easy to follow recipes can be found at: https://www.davita.com/recipes/recipe-collections/16-healthy-grilling-recipes-for-people-with-kidney-disease/rc/7205

Sensational Salads

There are plenty of easy to make and delicious sides and salads that will go perfectly with your grilled foods, or as easy entrees that are delicious as well as portable. Use them in sandwiches, on top of fresh salad greens, or on their own. Example: chicken or tuna salad made with fat free mayonnaise, celery, herbs, lemon juice, and chopped apples.

Decadent Desserts

Especially if you are out on the grill, you can make some healthy and delicious desserts simply by grilling your fruit. Peaches, pineapple, and apples are absolutely delicious when sliced thick and put on the grill. The heat brings out the sweet juiciness just perfectly. Add some fresh grated ginger and/or cinnamon to your apples and peaches for an extra flavor boost.

Custom Condiments

As many condiments simply have too much sodium, keep your toppings to a minimum. If your picnic foods need something extra, stick to mustard, mayonnaise, pepper, and onions to flavor your meals.

What to Avoid

When it comes to kidney friendly picnicking, there are going to be some foods that you want to avoid. Be wary of anything that is covered in condiments like ketchup and barbeque sauce, unless it is homemade with a kidney friendly recipe. These sauces have an enormous amount of additives that can be dangerous for you. Casseroles will usually have a lot of added salt as well. Luckily, you can make or find lots of healthy options for summer picnics.

Check out my casserole recipe at: Casserole Recipe For Kidney Disease

RDHQ045 Transcript

Welcome to the Renal Diet Headquarters podcast with your host, Mathea Ford, CEO of Renal Diet headquarters. This is our weekly talk about how you can succeed with a kidney diet. Brought to you by Renal Diet HQ.com, a website whose mission is to be the most valued resource on kidney disease that people can use to improve their health.

Hello. Welcome to the Renal Diet Headquarters podcast. This is number 45. I am your host, Mathea Ford. I wanted to talk to you today about things that are important to people with kidney disease and kidney failure. And you can find all the notes and the information I talked about at www.renaldiethq.com/045. Again, that's 045. I want to thank you for listening in. I know it's been a few months since January since I've published a podcast. And just suffice it to say, I took a little bit of a break and I'm back now to share my knowledge and my insights with you. I have been working hard on getting a consistent podcast schedule, so hopefully you'll see that come out in July. We're going to talk about healthy picnicking and ways to eat healthy when you're kind of out and about doing summery type stuff. And today, July 9, our topic is summer picnic ideas for people who have kidney disease. And you may think, well, that's not a big deal, but I know that really it is because normal picnic fare is like cold fried chicken or sandwiches with chips. And some of that can be just really wrong for you.

So I really want to talk about some good choices. So let's talk about, first of all, some great foods for grilling. I just want to get right into the topic and talk to you about it. It's not going to be a super long podcast, but it's going to be full of great information. So great foods for grilling. Grilling is one of the healthiest ways to cook your food. You get all that fat dripping off and you don't have to use fat on the grill. It just gets on there, leaves nice marks. That good smoky grilled flavor tastes delicious. And you can marinade things ahead of time. You could use some Italian fat free Italian dressing I like to use for marinade to get you a little bit extra flavor. You can use rubs on the grill. You can use rubs in a smoker. The other thing you can also do is for like fish or something, you can package it in. It's called packets. You put your fish in there and then you do some grilled, some vegetables that you might like to have with it and maybe a little bit of juice, like a lemon juice.

So you may put like a piece of fish in there and then put some green pepper, some onions, some green beans, and roll that up on the top so it's closed like a little packet. Cook that on the grill and then it'll be a delicious way to have that food that's not just unflavored, but it also gives you your whole meal right there when you open it up. Anything can cook on the grill. Meats and vegetables and more, you can grill to perfection. You could put shrimp and salmon on there. You can put your shrimp on a little skewer. Chicken. Those are all kidney friendly favorite foods that you can eat. Remember to stick to about 4oz. So 3 to 4oz, especially with pre dialysis kidney disease, you want to stick to that amount. How do you know how much that is? That's the size of the palm of your hand. Usually it's about 3 to 4oz that you can eat. Not too thick. Use salt free rubs. So you may have remember I mentioned about a rub. You may have a rub that you can put on there. Make sure it doesn't have any extra salt in it.

All the other herbs and spices are fine, but not salt. So just try to avoid adding salt. You can find lots of recipes online. But I think the main thing that I really like to do is, like I said, with the packets or with the Italian dressing, the fat free Italian dressing, you should be able to find some that are lower sodium. And just try to build yourself that little bit of marinade taste in there that gives it kind of good flavor. I like Brianna's. It's called real French dressing. It doesn't have any added sugar. And I like to put that on my meat after it's cooked on the grill. And I'll leave you some information about that. Another thing you can eat besides grilling, another thing you could do when you're picnicking or eating out is to have a salad. And it's important to know that salads, you got to kind of keep them cold. So you got to be careful. But there's plenty of easy to make and delicious salads insides that go perfectly with either your grilled foods or foods that you bring along in a picnic or by themselves. I love, love, love making a salad and adding like, a little bit of beans, a little bit of corn, and some chicken, like some grilled chicken.

Dicing it up, putting it right on top, and then putting that dressing on top. It's a very complete meal. So they're very portable. They're very easy to take along with you. Use them in your sandwiches. You can make the chicken salad, for example. Chicken salad is super easy to make. You just have to be careful how much you put on your sandwich. But you basically put mayonnaise and I put dill pickle relish, put a little pepper in there. If you don't like dill pickles, you can use something else but a little mayo. You could chop up some celery in there. Some people put almonds, some people put grapes. Just do it to your taste. I love to toast the bread and use that as a delicious way to have your meal. Use chicken salad, tuna salad, whatever you have. Make sure you're trying to stick to just that 3oz that we talked about. Make your chicken salad with the fat free mayo or the low cal mayo, so you're not adding a lot of calories, but use a little bit of chopped apples, use a little bit of celery, use a little bit of grapes in there.

The other thing that can make it easy to keep your portions small with the chicken salad and apple kind of chopped apples, tuna salad, whatever you want to make. If you take small little dinner rolls with you and you cut them in half and you use that as your item for your meal instead of using regular bread, it's really easy to eat those. You can have a couple and you can have about an ounce of meat on those each, and you're not overdoing it with your protein. So think about that. Make sure if you do take bread that you're using white bread. Desserts when you're out eating. Let's talk about that for a minute. You can make some healthy, delicious desserts by just grilling fruit on the grill. And you may think, what are you talking about? I've seen grilled watermelon. I know I've seen grilled peaches. I love grilled peaches. Grilled nectarines, you can grill your vegetables, obviously, but what? And pineapple, apples, all those, you just slice them thick and put them on the grill. The heat gives it a little bit of juiciness and it also just seals in that flavor and it makes them a little sweeter, so it ripens them a little more and just gives them that little bit more sweetness.

And they are so good that way. And if you've never tried them, I just want to encourage you to try them. And if you have done them, I just encourage you to do them a little more. It's really easy to do and just get those little grill marks on there. I saw a watermelon pizza the other day on TV that looks so delicious, but they had taken the watermelon, sliced it and grilled it and just try it. I promise you, you may or may not like it, but just try it. Add some fresh grated ginger or a little bit of cinnamon to your apples and peaches for an extra flavor boost. So you may cut them up and then just shake them up with a little bit of ginger or cinnamon and then put them on the grill. Condiments are the one another thing that you want to kind of be careful, cautious about because of the amount of sodium that they have. Custom making your condiments can be very helpful if you want to bring along some of your own salt free ketchup or salt free lower calorie vegetable dressing. But many condiments have too much sodium.

Keep your toppings to a minimum. You've got your onions. You can have lettuce, onions, those types of things. But if your picnic food needs a little something extra, like moisture to the bun, stick to the mustard, stick to the mayonnaise, add some peppers, add some onions to your meal to make them more flavorful. Try to avoid ketchup. It has a lot of salt and a lot of sugar in it. What do you need to avoid? When it comes to kidney friendly picnicking, there are going to be some foods that you want to avoid. Be aware of anything that's covered in condiments like ketchup and barbecue sauce. Barbecue sauce can be another one that's really sweet and a lot of salt. So ketchup and barbecue sauce, unless they're made with a kidney friendly recipe that you know of, or like I said, you can buy the low sodium ketchup in the store, you should avoid them. Those sauces have enormous amount of additives. Casseroles can have a lot of added salt as well because a lot of times they're made with premade sauces. Luckily, you can find lots of healthy options for summer picnics and lots of those summery foods on my blog.

This week I'm going to publish a summer cobbler with blackberries and strawberries that I made for my family for 4th of July. I'm going to publish that as a recipe this week. I also am going to put a link on the blog, in the show notes, Renaldiethq.com/045. In there, I'm going to put a link to the casserole dish that I have that you can basically make your own. And it allows you to assemble a casserole dish that is very kidney friendly, which I think you'll love and will make your life a lot easier, especially if you make this up ahead and you freeze it and you use it for those nights during the week. The other thing is, you could take it, like I said, out. You can go to potlucks and stuff like that with it. So that's all I have to say about summer picnic ideas. I hope I gave you some new ideas, new thoughts on what to do for a picnic idea. I want to thank you again for listening. Thank you again for coming back. I hope that you'll find these podcasts nice and short and informative. I really enjoyed talking to you.

I'd like you to send a note to me about what else you'd like to hear at the podcast [email protected]. And also ask you if you enjoy my products and you're at all interested in them, then please let me know and send me a note and I can send you some information or I can send your doctor information. If you really think they should know about it, just let me know and you could email that to the podcast at Renaldiethq as well. That's it for this week. Next week I'm going to talk about ways to lower your risk when you're out on a picnic, things that spoil easy that are hard to eat, those types of things. So that's what I'm going to talk about next week, and I look forward to that. Have a great weekend. Bye bye.

You've been listening to the Renal Diet Headquarters podcast. Head on over to the website www.renaldiethq.com/go/email to sign up for our email list and get exciting updates every week on what is happening. Thanks and we'll talk to you again next week.

 

Email me at [email protected] for suggestions

Find us on iTunes at: www.renaldiethq.com/itunes

Find us on stitcher radio at: www.renaldiethq.com/go/stitcher

 

Similar Posts

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *