Cooking From Scratch

On most days I do enjoy cooking. There are those occasional days that I really don’t feel like cooking at all. When I do get in those spurts of cooking, I go all out. I do cook healthy due to health issues and I also get tired of cooking the same old things. I don’t eat canned soups at all so when I was craving pork chops the other day, I was thinking about chops with soup over them. I remembered years ago I had made cream of mushroom soup from a recipe that I saw in The Tightwad Gazette.

The recipe said to make a simple white sauce and add either mushrooms or celery to make a cream soup. Well I got out my little chopper and found some mushrooms in the fridge and chopped them up. I then put only about 1 teaspoon of margarine in a pan to melt and added the mushrooms to that. I think I used about 6 or 7 mushrooms. I then mixed up 1 cup of powdered milk, using a little extra powder so that it would be a little more strong. I poured some of the milk into the pan and then I added 2 to 3 tablespoons of unbleached flour to the rest of the milk. I shook it thoroughly and added it to the rest of milk and butter. While I was waiting for it to boil, I added some onion powder and pepper to it. I continued stirring it until it thickened. It smelled so good. It looked just like cream of mushroom soup except that I never used salt. I tasted it and it wasn’t that bad. If you want to add salt, then go right ahead.

Once it got to my desired consistency, I poured it over my pork chops. While they were baking they smelled so good. I forgot to take a picture when they came out of the oven but they looked no different than if you would have used the canned version. This recipe is much healthier and so much cheaper than buying a can of soup. At least I can pronounce the ingredients.

I have thought about mixing some powdered milk, flour, and  spices together and putting them in either a snack size baggie or a baby food jar so that part of the soup will already be done. It will make cooking a little quicker on those nights when I am busy. I made a soup that was fat free and sodium free. I will definitely be making this again.

 

Beth