Cream of Crap Soup

Guess what I did tonight?!  I cooked supper.

Oh, wait, that's nothing new. 

I didn't even make a new recipe.  I made our old standby "Hamburger Stroganoff" that would probably earn me a good thrashing from a Russian. 

I've worked to make the recipe not quite so horrible in the health department; I use lean ground beef and usually get light sour cream too.  The big problem is the fact that the sauce is about 2/3 cream of mushroom soup.  (The other 1/3 is the afore-mentioned sour cream.  This is not diet food) 

The man of the house has slightly high blood pressure.  It's type-A-personality induced high blood pressure, and some genetics too.  It isn't so high that he's been threatened by his doctor and forced to take on a seriously low-sodium diet, but at the same time I'm sure it wouldn't hurt to cut back some... right?  Especially considering he eats out quite a bit for work and restaurants are not known for going light on the salt. 

I found a few recipes online for making your own homemade healthier substitute for cream of crap soup.  There are lots of different versions.  The one I did tonight was essentially just making a pretty thick white sauce that you season as desired.  Butter, finely chopped mushrooms, flour, milk.  If you'd rather have cream of chicken, omit the mushrooms and use half milk, half chicken broth.  Or some such variation.  I've also seen versions of homemade cream soup where you make up a whole big batch of a powdered mix and use what you need at the time.  Honestly, I'm not sure that would really save any time though.  You'd still have to mix it with the milk and heat it to get it thick.  If I chop up the rest of the mushrooms and IQF them then I could whip up a batch from scratch just as fast as I could from the mix. 

In case you need a hint, IQF = individually quick frozen.  I do not actually have a blast freezer in my house, mine's more of an ISF.  Anything I want to freeze something and not have it all stick together (diced veggies, berries, etc) I lay them out in a single layer on a cookie sheet.  Into the deep freeze until they are frozen, then into big zippies or freezer boxes.  Hopefully I remember to label them!  They don't freeze as quickly as commercial products are frozen, but they're good enough for me. 

Anyway, the verdict on tonight's supper was that it was good!  Other than being obviously less salty (I never buy the low sodium condensed cream soups because I think they taste barfy) I couldn't tell a difference, especially once I added a little more salt at the table.  It helps that most of the flavor of stroganoff is the sour cream.  Next week I'm thinking church potatoes.  We'll see how that turns out.  You know what else I should try, is that hamburger noodle casserole that is GODAWFUL from a health perspective but pretty stinkin' delicious.  Is the man out all next week?  I can't remember.  That would be a good time to experiment with that.  On second thought, I'll wait on that until after the first of the year when we get new beef.