Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup - No Sodium, Low Potassium Recipe

Raw Mushrooms contain approximately 126-250 mg Potassium per half cup, which is listed in the medium category of our Kaiser Nutrition booklet.  Based on a serving size of 1/2 cup as a sauce over noodles or rice, this would break down to approximately
There are so many different Copy Cat Recipes online for this that it was difficult to decide which one to try.  This version turned out to be very good and I can't wait to use it with pork chops or round steaks. If I were going to eat just the soup, I'd have to add some salt. Or perhaps instead of adding the Table Tasty while cooking, I'd try adding it at the table, I'm thinking the slightly salty taste may cook out of it.

In the next batch I will leave out the celery and garlic and see how that works. I added the garlic because there was a weird taste that we decided was the celery, and it was like it was missing something to tone down that flavor.  The garlic powder worked and really gave it that little boost it needed. I'll be sure to post how the no celery, no garlic recipe turns out when I make it. I'm thinking it might be a closer match to the canned stuff, minus that salty taste and be more appropriate for my Tuna Casserole :)

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup of unsalted butter
• 1/2 cup of finely minced onion
• 1/4 cup of finely minced celery
• 4 cups (approx. 12 ounces) coarsely chopped fresh mushrooms
• 2 teaspoon of Table Tasty salt replacement
• 1 tablespoon Garlic Granules (powder or fresh should work I happen to like to use Kirkland brand from Costco)
• 3/4 cup of all purpose flour
• 3 cups of water
• 3 packets of No Sodium Chicken Boullion crystals
• 1/2 teaspoon granulated sugar
• 1 cup Mocha Mix

Instructions

Melt the butter in a large skillet and saute the onion and celery over medium heat until tender but not browned. Stir in the chopped mushrooms and salt replacement; cook and stir about 2-3 minutes. Stir in the flour a little at a time until fully incorporated, about 4 minutes, stirring constantly. Mix the boulion packets with the water, increase heat to medium high and slowly add the broth a little at a time, until fully incorporated. Reduce heat and simmer for 15 minutes. Stir in sugar and Mocha Mix and heat through. 

Use about 1-1/4 cups to replace a can of soup. The recipe makes a little over a quart, or roughly enough to equal about 4 cans.  Use any place where you would use Campbell's Condensed Cream of Mushroom Soup. Can be frozen.

P.S.  I use my beloved food processor (Thank You, Evelyn) for chopping and mincing the vegetables, makes this a snap to put together.

I adapted this recipe from
http://www.deepsouthdish.com/2010/11/homemade-condensed-cream-of-mushroom.html
Many Thanks for sharing your "beloved southern béchamel".

Seasoned Pork Chops - SUCCESS!

McCormick's Perfect Pinch Garlic and Herb Salt Free (no potassium on the label either) turned ordinary pork chops into a delicious dinner this evening.  They got devoured before I thought to take a picture so the next time we make them, I'll be sure to snap a shot.

E.J. made these and here's what he did:
 Sautéed a couple of onion slices in some olive oil.
Coated the chops with McCormick's Perfect Pinch Garlic and Herb salt free seasoning and some black pepper on both sides of pork chop and cooked them in the onion flavored EVO (can use Canola Oil too) on a low heat until done, time will depend on the thickness of the chop.

That was it and they were moist and wonderful.  YAY!  I just know we are going to be able to do this!!  We added some garlic noodles (oops, the I Can't Believe It's Not Butter has some potassium and salt in it as a preservative, hopefully it's not much though.  The amount isn't listed) margarine, oregano, pepper and E.J. likes to add basil, I don't like the basil in it and I add salt to mine on my plate, and some canned salt free green beans flavored with a couple spritzes of the fake butter spray and we had a rather yummy dinner that met all the new diet restrictions.

No Salt, No Potassium, No Sugar, No Carbs, No Protien, What the heck?

I'm going to try to start sharing this restricted diet journey so that others who are having to change their whole culinary world may find a little help from our trial and error.

The Dad has fiddled around (barely paid any attention) with his diabetes to the point where he now has CKD (Chronic Kidney Disease) and is approaching stage 4 along with hyper-tension.  His doctor woke him up to the reality of his situation when the threat of dialysis came into his most recent evaluation of lab tests, so we are in a hard scrabble to make the necessary adjustments to his eating habits and it's really proving to be confusing and extremely difficult and I feel so bad that he has to give up all the foods he loves the most in order to extend his life a bit longer.  (Whew! talk about a run on sentence!)

We had been working on the diabetes at meal times, but he would eat out and sneak things that he wasn't supposed to have.  I'm happy to say, he has stopped that.  At least so far :)  He's actually trying to keep a log of what he eats during the day (well, he tells me and I write it down) but we are working together on it.  Sometimes I think it's harder on E.J.  He likes to cook with all kinds of stuff that are now on the cannot have list and we are all having to change our thinking and make the proper adjustments when cooking for him.

One thing that is helping us is that we fix the bland meal that the Dad can eat and then after he is fed, we doctor it up with the stuff to make it taste yummy.  So far, we've managed to make some interestingly edible (not exactly delicious but edible) substitutions to our dinner rotation.  Lunches are proving to be the real tricky meal of the day.

Plus, I'm so morbidly obese that it's really hard for anyone to take dietary advice from me.  It's gonna be that 'practice what you preach' kind of thing.  I don't have the same health concerns that he has, but my problems are mostly weight related and I should have been paying attention to my eating habits for many years now too.  NO MORE EXCUSES!!!!

We went to the nutrition class that Kaiser holds for kidney care, and he went to the diabetes class a few years back.  They have both been really helpful, but we have put in a request for a personal nutritionist to help us with meal planning.  Doing this on our own, with all the vague and inconsistent information we are gleaning from just about everywhere is not helping us much.  We have come up with some really good substitutions so far and I hope to share them here, however, the quest continues for better recipes and meal plans.