31. Wild Rice and Mushroom Soup

My family is doing the Kathy Freston 21 Day Quantum Wellness Cleanse. We are eliminating alcohol, caffeine, sugar, gluten, and animal products from our diet for 3 weeks. This presents some challenges, but we’re managing. This Cleanse requires really thinking about what we’re eating—and reading labels on everything. This week’s recipe is from the Cooking Light Soup cook book. I had to make some changes so that we could stick to our wellness cleanse.

Wild Rice and Mushroom Soup

2 teaspoons butter
½ cup chopped carrot (about 2 medium carrot)
1 large onion, chopped
2 celery stalks, thinly sliced (about ¾ cup)
1 (8 oz) package pre-sliced mushrooms
1 teaspoon chopped fresh or ¼ teaspoon dried rosemary
¼ teaspoon black pepper
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 (14 oz) cans fat-free, less-sodium chicken broth
1 cup uncooked wild rice
1/3 cup all purpose flour
2 ¾ 2% reduced fat milk
2 tablespoons dry sherry
¾ teaspoons salt

1. Melt butter in a Dutch oven over medium high heat. Add carrot and next 6 ingredients; sauté 8 minutes or until tender. Stir in broth, scraping pan to loosen browned bits. Stir in rice; bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat and simmer 1 hour and 15 minutes or until rice is tender.
2. Lightly spoon flour into a dry measuring cup; level with a knife. Combine flour and milk in a small bowl, stirring with a whisk. Add to soup mixture. Cook over medium heat 10 minutes or until thick, stirring frequently. Stir in sherry and salt. Yield:8 1 cup servings

Changes and Shortcuts:
I used the following substitutions:
Butter = vegan butter
Chicken broth = vegetable broth
Flour = potato starch (you can’t use equal parts, you must use less—the package should have the equivalent)
Milk = rice milk
Sherry = cooking wine

I wouldn’t have been able to make this after work, so I did step one in the morning and just finished the soup when I got home.


Results: Not bad for an experiment. This tasted ok when freshly made, but not that great left over.

Keeper? I don’t think so