Vegetarian potato curry, celery soup with a few meatballs, oats for breakfast, bread for lunch: daily cholesterol intake 34 mg.
The typical breakfast of almond milk with brown sugar and cooked oats: simple, healthy and zero cholesterol. It’s a far cry from bacon with eggs, but once the bad LDL is back to normal and I can increase my daily intake from 200 mg to 300 cholesterol a day: eggs are not really incorporated in our diet.
Today’s lunch was not cooked by my wife, means just bread with the leftover pumpkin soup of yesterday: simple and good, and no extra cholesterol.
Dinner consisted out of rice, potato curry and leek soup with meatballs: in total 34 mg cholesterol from 40 grams (1.4 oz) of pork meat a person.
For the potato curry, I wanted to blend some onion with fresh coriander and candle nuts. For no apparent reason, the transmission under the blades of my Magic Bullet blender just broke for no apparent reason: this little blender is a very useful (blending nuts for milk each and every day to start with) and practical small blender, but really not long lasting 🙁 . Anyway, we are prepared and keep spare-parts close by 🙂
So after blending onion with candlenuts and a bit of fresh coriander, it was fried in olive oil. Add to that 1 tablespoon curry spices, 1 teaspoon garam masala spices and salt, add pieces of potato, fresh curry leaves and saute further. Add water, put a lid on it and boil for 15 minutes. Thicken the sauce with cornflour, taste and adjust the flavors.
For the simple celery soup, I saute 1 onion cut into pieces, add 3 celery stems (should have used more for a stronger celery taste), add the potatoes and let saute all together with some pepper and salt added. Then add almond milk (400 ml – 13½ fluid oz), bring to a boil, let simmer for 15 minutes and puree. Bring again to the boil and add the meatballs, so the starch of the potato can further thicken the soup and the meatballs can be cooked (ready when floating on top, I gave them 5 minutes).
The meatballs are just chopped pork meat with pantoasted bread that I blend (there is the Magic Bullet blender again) and panroast further till aromatic (quite brown that is but not black!). Added some mustard, pepper, salt and spring onions, chop all together and add to the soup after it is blended. All in all 80 grams (2.8 oz) of pork meat for 2, so 34 mg cholesterol per person.
Total cholesterol intake today: about 34 mg
- breakfast: 0 mg
- lunch: 0 mg from pork meat
- dinner: 34 mg from pork meatballs
As you can see, it’s not too difficult to follow a low cholesterol diet of 200 mg or less daily intake: just go easy on meat and dairy (butter, cheese, cream, full milk and fat yoghurt), and you will notice the drop in cholesterol consumed.
The challenge is to find and keep on finding new recipes that you can enjoy. Or to quote my wife: “enough with the soup and meatballs, please cook something different tomorrow” … 🙂
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