Creamy sauces the easy way

I mostly learned to cook from recipes. My grandmother didn't want to share her kitchen, so my mother learned from recipes and passed that on. For cream-based sauces, that meant either cream of something soup or starting with a roux, melting butter and flour. That no longer works with our diet, so I had to find a different way. And I did-real cream. You might think "duh"-cream for a cream sauce. However, recipes I had always started with a roux.

Before, when I made a cheese sauce, I would make a roux, then add milk and heat it until it thickened, then add the shredded cheese. It was fairly time consuming. We are now avoiding flour, so I had to find a different way. Now, I could have used a different thickener, and I do when I make gravy, but using cream is incredibly simply. Pour heavy cream into the saucepan, add shredded cheese, and heat. Maybe add a pinch of salt. Makes the best cheese sauce.

Made a mustard cream sauce for the leftover ham that was lovely. Cream and mustard in the pan, heat through. We both loved it.

For cream-based soups, I have created a stock and then concentrated it by cooking it down. After this, I add the cream. It isn't as easy as opening a can, but I get far fewer chemicals and nice flavor.

For many years, high fat dairy foods were castigated as unhealthy. In recent years, studies have been finding that to be incorrect. When I first read about Atkin's high protein diet, I thought it was crazy. However, I see more and more evidence that his suggestions have merit. So, rather than using something crazy with lots of chemicals to replace the cream sauce bases, or eliminating them from our diet, I now use cream and love it.

I suspect this is another example of me doing things the old fashioned way and finding it to be better. Now if only I had a cow...