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[Bill Jones <billj AT harborside.com>]

It's very easy to live on pretzels and cold cuts and cheese, and the 
sodium-potassium ratio of this sort of diet can approach 10:1, without 
plenty of fruits and vegetables to balance things out.  These are the 
only foods that dramatically tip the balance in favor of potassium.  
Trouble is, I'm a lazy cook when I'm here alone, the fruit in the store 
is awful except for the bananas, I don't yet have enough garden beds to 
really have lots of produce, and the tomatoes are running out.  These 
days bread has been really cheap, since the low-carb craze started, so 
it's easy to depend on it.

In my case there's another factor.  My gall bladder reacts to grease, so 
without some bread or potatoes to soak it up, just the naturally 
occurring fat in meat causes me pain.  So I can't just skip the carbs.  
I used to pop corn with the air popper, but the new one is shite, 
spewing out lots of old maids.  The bread from the store is actually 
soft enough to eat with no butter.  But as I've pointed out, the only 
way (short of potassium supplements) to maintain the right balance would 
be to eat plenty of the disappearing produce.  And the store-bought 
bread does contain quite a bit of fat, too, so it's not that great a 
grease sponge.

The potato has become my only refuge, the only practical way for me to 
get enough potassium and absorb grease all year long, but even those are 
in limited supply.  Figuring out how to make them taste good with no fat 
is another problem.  But fortunately, as was the point of my original 
post, at least I can salt them freely.

I haven't yet encountered a need to worry yet about the 
solanine-arthritis link, but there are other roots.  Virtually all are 
low in fat and high in potassium.  Yacon and jerusalem artichoke are low 
in digestible calories, too.  They're perfect for when you've spent the 
day at the fair, so you're not really hungry, but your sodium-potassium 
ratio could use improvement.  Yacon seems to be pretty good at absorbing 
grease, too, but not quite as great as popcorn.

I confess I have some trouble making all my own food from scratch, when 
I'm here alone.  I can't eat any kind of ready-made food, usually 
because of the grease.  The alternative to cooking a 3-course dinner for 
one every night is to have lots of leftovers, the only way I stay sane.  
I really can't deal with coming in from working and finding nothing to 
eat when I'm ravenous, so I always keep cooked meat on hand.  I haven't 
exactly mastered the art of _leftover_ fat-free potato dishes that taste 
good, so we're back to store-bought bread and the high sodium content!

Bill