Okay, I currently have a bee in my little bonnet thanks to a book called "Quick-Mix Healthy Mix" by Casey Kellar and Nicole Kellar-Munoz. It is, as the title says, a collection of homemade "mix" recipes that you can use in place of the high priced store brands made with ingredients that you can't pronounce. I've already put together their recipe for an all-purpose meat seasoning that I hope will please our Picky Eater Spirit and her almost as fussy Father who, in addition to being generally particular about flavor, can't eat onions, either fresh, cooked or dehydrated. Yes, I go through a LOT of onion powder! Anyway, this book has all sorts of "mixes" in it: breakfast cereals, baking mixes, sauce mixes, rubs, salad dressings and all sorts of things for a well stocked kitchen. The best part is that you can control what is in your food. The older I get the more dubious I become about the things that the food manufacturers put in their products. My hair also stands on end when I figure out the "price per serving" on some of this stuff! There aren't enough hours in the day for me to grow/produce everything we eat but I figure I'll start small and do what I can.

Well, I modified the seasoning recipe, combined two different meatloaf recipes and came up with something everyone in my family will actually eat. I have to bake them in two different pans but that's a minor detail

Given Skywise's new dietary restrictions, I'm probably going to be making a lot of things from scratch -- for instance "Rice Sides" mixes -- in order to get the sodium down to an acceptable level. Since I know that VE and her Hubby have similar dietary restrictions, I'll be posting the results of my experiments here and I'll be including the amount of sodium per serving/teaspoon.
Thank the Gods for Calculated Industries "Kitchen Calc"!

I will probably start an herb garden of some sort next year. It's a bit late to start now and I'm going to need to figure out what herbs I'm going to need and secondly.... HOW TO KEEP THE CRITTERS AWAY FROM THEM!! If the deer don't get into it, there are rabbits, squirrels, ground squirrels, possums and raccoons who could develop a taste for fresh herbs if they haven't gotten one already! At least they're staying out of the catnip bed! We're going to have to redo the "rose cage" because the bush is outgrowing it and the deer have already eaten all the buds but one! 

Awesome! The less number crunching the BETTER... (Says the math nerd!)

I think there are three calculators here - one is on the cell phone, and one is on the computer. Tax time and it came on both the computer and the cell.

I'll probably look into that. I don't use a lot of broths but that could change.

Moderator's note: New topic started, to keep them separate from the general discussion and so they won't get lost.

Finally figured it out. I'll double check my figures in a bit but it looks like the answer is 972.7 mg per teaspoon.

I don't remember if I asked you before bit can Skywise have garlic or chives?  I have regular chives and garlic chives, both make a nice flavour substitute for onion.  They are easy to grow.  Actually you have to treat chives like mint because they will spread like mad and grow like weeds.  Very easy to harvest as well if you want to dry them, cut them, wash them let them dry out.  Then take kitchen shears and cut them into pieces.  Put them in a paper lunch bag to dry.  It keeps them clean and together.  If you have chicken wire or something kicking around (like snow fence) you could make a quick herb-garden surround.  You have a longer growing season than we do so you could still get decent herbs.  They can also be mulched and wintered over quite well.  The chamomile, thyme, chives, golden majoram and oregano all wintered well.  You could also transplant some to tubs to use in the house over the winter.  Chives, oregano and basil do quite well in the house in a window sill.

My list of recipes to be copied into the family cookbook is getting long, especially since I'm going through my collection of Top Secret Recipe books and pulling out recipes for things that before I wouldn't make at home but now will so I can control the salt content. DEFINITELY gonna need a "kitchen grill." I'm having trouble finding a "George Foreman" that meets my requirements so I'll be looking at other brands.

I'm transferring my "never fail" pie crust recipe from my old cookbook to the new one. My old "collected recipes" book is showing its age and the book the recipe came from is even older. I haven't been able to find this exact recipe online and since I don't plan on "messing with success" I'm entering it into the computer manually. I have my mother's old Fannie Farmer cookbook which is probably over 50 years old -- have to check the copyright date -- and all the recipes are "like grandma (or great grandma) used to make" before people went berserk and took the flavor out of everything.

A food processor and a bread maker are both worthwhile investments.  When it comes to the bread maker I'd suggest going with one that only has 1 blade for kneading/mixing.  My B&D has two and it's a pita!  I end up having to dig both blades out of my loaf when it`s done. If you have any thrift stores around, try picking up a bread maker there for $10 - 20.  Most of the time they are in almost - new shape and have been donated simply because they weren`t being used enough.  The food processor I would highly recommend getting new.

We were able to get to Barnes & Noble today and I got three low-salt, no salt, heart healthy cookbooks so you know what I'm going to be reading for a while! LOL 
The books:
The New American Heart Association Cookbook
The No-Salt Cookbook
Betty Crocker Heart Healthy Cookbook -- which is the one I went in to look for!

I've already spotted some interesting looking recipes.....