I love soup, but in trying to watch my carbs, there are two issues – first is most soups with any kind of “character” tend to be high in carb. I mean, cheddar potato and chicken with brown and wild rice are right on up there. And any sort of crackers, chips, or nice chunks of bread accompanying the soup add to the mix. The spicy fish stew we make (it’s in the old posts) is one of the few that’s low calorie, low fat, low carb, and tastes like an actual meal. As you may have noticed from the posts of our trip, dining was a part of it and not surprisingly, I need to spend the time between this and the trip coming up next week taking it easy on carbs to re-balance. It so happens I still had some frozen turkey stock and got to thinking. If I used a fair amount of turkey and one of the bulk sausages and took it easy on the veggies with a focus on celery, onion, and peppers, plus a can of cream soup to give some body, that would keep it relatively low carb.

In my case, I enjoy spice, so I opted for hot sausage, but it can be any type. I picked up a package of fresh turkey tenderloins that I cut into small pieces. Then it was 2 stalks celery diced, 1/2 sweet yellow pepper, diced, 1/2 small onion diced. I browned the sausage and the turkey, then moved them aside in the pot and softened the veggies. For spices, I went southwestern and used smoke sea salt (1/2 tsp), several grounds of black pepper, and cumin (1/2 tsp). I had two cups of turkey stock and 1 can of cream of celery soup. I added some water (about 1/2 cup) to get the consistency I wanted, stirred everything together well, brought it to a boil, then took it down to low for another 30 minutes. It’s a nice combination and enough “body” to be filling. You could play with the combination of spices to be milder with something like rosemary, basil, oregano, and thyme – probably 1/4 tsp each. Zucchini is another low carb vegetable, but I don’t care for it cooked.