Low-Protein Pierogie Soup

     When I met my husband, I was introduced to quite a few different food recipes.  My in-laws grew up around LaSalle-Peru, IL which is only about 1 1/2 hours south of where I grew up.  Even though, it's not that far away there are ALOT of things that are different about that area.  Instead of saying that things are kitty-corner from each other, they say katty-corner.  Instead of eating tortellinis, they're called raviolis.  And raviolis are called...raviolis!  Another thing that I thought was different was that sometimes, the tortellinis raviolis were served in chicken broth (as a soup) instead of marinara sauce.  I was also introduced to pierogies!  They're kind of like raviolis (the real ravioli) except they're shaped like half moons and are filled with potatoes and cheese. 
     Ryan usually fries the pierogies on the stove and serves them with melted butter and sausage.  Well, I'm still in charge of grocery shopping and usually still make a weekly menu.  I stopped posting them because...well I just kept forgetting to post them!  Anyways, I apparently got the pierogie and tortellini soup recipes mixed up!  So, I ended up buying the ingredients to make Pierogie soup.  We made our soup using cheese/potato pierogies, chicken broth, and a can of mixed vegetables.  You pour the broth into a pan, add the other ingredients, and let it cook for about an hour.

     I wanted Lily to be able to eat something similar, so instead of using chicken broth, I used vegetable broth.  We used her pierogies from Cambrooke.  The Cambrooke pierogies are 6.25 phe each.  We prepared Lily's soup just like ours.  We put the vegetable broth into a pot, added the pierogies and a can of mixed vegetables.  We let the soup cook for about an hour, just so that everything had a consistent taste.  Here's where it got a little tricky.  We were easily able to figure out how much phe the pierogies gave for each serving, just by counting them!  The vegetable broth has zero phe!  we used Swanson's Clear Vegetable Broth, ready to serve.  Make sure you check the phe book (Low Protein Food List for PKU by Virginia Schuett) for the broth.  There are a few brands that do have phe. 

     The veggies were a little more complicated.  Again, you need to check the phe book for an accurate count.  There are over 40 varieties of mixed vegetables with phe content ranging from 0.30-1.13 mg/gm of food!  We ended up using Green Giant's Plain Mixed Vegetables, which have 0.80 phe/gm.  The can had 1 cup of veggies, which equaled 44 phe.  This is where we had two options. 
1.  Use a little creative math- guesstimate how many servings are in the soup mixture and divide that
     that by the 44 phe.  This would give an estimate of how many veggie phe were in each serving.
2.  Scoop out the soup and then remove the veggies.  Weigh the veggies for an accurate amount of
     phe and return them to the soup.

     Since Lily has been having really controlled levels and has never had a problem with being high, we are pretty loose with some of her measurements.  We do weigh most of her foods, but at times like this, we just use the creative math method!  I would strongly suggest using the more accurate method if your phe levels have a tendency to be high.  There aren't a lot of veggies in the soup mix, but veggies can have a high phe content! 

     At first Lily was a little hesitant on how to eat the soup.  We had to show her how to not let it dribble down her chin!  Once she got the hang of it, she loved it.