Creamy Chicken & Wild Rice Soup

My most favorite soup ever is creamy chicken and wild rice soup. I just love it. Sadly, my favorite place to get it is back home in Oregon and since I'm in Utah, I miss it a lot. So I decided to make my own and try to make it as good (and healthy) as possible (creamy soup usually = not so healthy soup). So I found a bunch of different chicken and wild rice soup recipes, took what I liked and cut out what I didn't, and came up with this. I made it for dinner tonight and it was quite good (I swear it tastes better than this picture looks). Still not the healthiest soup ever but hey, its better than it was!

Ingredients:

- 1 T. Extra virgin olive oil
- 1 c. chopped celery

- 1 c. chopped carrots

- 1/4 c. all purpose flour

- 1/4 c. chopped shallots

- 1/4 t. salt

- 1/4 t. freshly ground pepper

- 1/4 t. thyme

- 2 bay leaves

- dash of garlic powder

- 4 c. reduced sodium chicken broth

- 1 c. quick cooking or instant wild rice

- 2c. - 3 c. cooked chicken (cubed or shredded, whatever you like)

- 1/2 c. reduced fat sour cream

- 1 T. parsley

Preparation:

1. Heat oil in large saucepan over medium heat. Add celery, carrots & shallots and cook, stirring, until softened, about 5 minutes. Add flour, salt, and pepper and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes.

2. Add broth, thyme, bay leaves and garlic powder and bring to a boil, scraping up any browned bits. Add rice and reduce heat to a simmer. Cover and cook until the rice in tender, 7-10 minutes. Stir in chicken, sour cream, and parsley and cook until heated through.

Yield: 6 servings. Serving size, 1 3/4 cups

Nutritional Information: (as best as I could figure out)

Calories: 360

Fat: 9g

Chol: 90mg

Protein: 36g

Sodium: 380