By Elke Henneberg, consultant and editor, AAKP Delicious!
The AAKP is excited to see the 7th edition of AAKP Delicious! coming to life, and we are inviting you to try 12 new recipes, which offer a mouth-watering variety of foods for you to enjoy. Who says a kidney-friendly diet is boring? The days of eating white rice and soggy vegetables have been officially over since AAKP Delicious! was created 10 years ago. It is all about simple home cooking and lots of flavor. Preparing foods at home with ingredients you choose is the best way to keep sodium, potassium, and phosphorus in check.
Breakfast anyone? We have all done it...grabbed a donut and a coffee and called it breakfast. To ensure balanced nutrition, we should include protein, starch, and a fruit or vegetable. The AAKP Delicious! recipe series features recipes to help start your day. An omelet in a mug, chai-spiced muffins, and a delightful breakfast spread are some of the AAKP team’s favorite recipes! Plant-based protein is another topic we explore in each series of AAKP Delicious! A lentil salad in a mason jar is a perfect lunch for on the go!
And don’t forget to watch our short recipe demo videos on the AAKP YouTube
channel by visiting https://bit.ly/AAKPDeliciousRecipeVideos . In two to three minutes, you will be guided through each step of preparing our easy and delicious foods. No need to be a “pro” in the kitchen to make the recipe at home! Recipes from previous editions of AAKP Delicious! can be downloaded and ordered online at https://bit.ly/AAKPrecipes.
As the editor of AAKP Delicious!, I am privileged to work with dedicated professionals with a long-established career in kidney care. Our AAKP Delicious! registered dietitian team of Stacey Phillips, MS, RDN and Janelle Gonyea RDN, LD, FNKF not only analyze each recipe to make sure it fits into a kidney-friendly diet, they also have a wealth of information and cooking tips for you. Whether it’s adding low-potassium seasoning to your favorite foods or choosing kidney-friendly meat toppings, they have you covered! With each recipe, you’ll find tips and information to help with choosing foods and learning cooking techniques. The nutrient analysis in each recipe is tailor-made so that our readers can find the information which is important to them. Each recipe has a label indicating for which diet it is suitable if prepared as-is. We encourage you to share your AAKP Delicious! recipes with your dietitian so he/she can help make modifications that best fit your needs and palate!
We are encouraging you to use your own kitchen and cook your own foods. There are so many foods you can eat, even with the needs of a kidney diet. We believe everyone should think about what all they CAN eat, and not what they can’t eat. Our motto is simple–“Everything is possible: it is the quantity that counts”! Food is so much more than just nutrition. As we all learned during the recent pandemic when we had to spend time away from loved ones, it is wonderful to be able to share meals, eat, chat, and be happy. Most of our recipes are easy to make and the ingredients are affordable. They are great recipes for family cooking so the person who is struggling with kidney disease can eat what everybody else is enjoying.
Serving size is key in all our recipes. Sometimes we include ingredients which are commonly known as “no go” for a kidney diet, such as higher-potassium vegetables and fruits. But research is evolving, recommendations are changing, and we are trying to keep you informed about new developments and the importance of portion size. After all, diet modifications should not stand in the way of a good quality of life.
With this new collection of recipes, we like to invite you to test your cooking skills, try new recipes, and enjoy home-cooked meals with friends and family! How about Sheet Pan Chicken and Walnut Cookies for tonight?
Elke Henneberg is the owner of Communication Ebmed Inc., which specializes in creating support tools for people living with chronic conditions. She is the publisher of Spice It Up!, a Canadian cookbook series for people with chronic kidney disease. Elke has created kidney-friendly recipes for AAKP Delicious! since inception and has consulted on the development of editions one through seven.
