Cooking with Seema

I made this soup - recipe from "The New Moosewood Cookbook" by Mollie Katzen - for dinner yesterday. Very yummy. I'm typing out the original recipe here and my substitutions are in italics.

Hungarian Mushroom Soup

2 tbs. butter
2 cups chopped onion
1 1/2 to 2 lbs mushrooms sliced (mine ended up chopped, ah well)
1 tsp salt (this ended up being 2 or 3 tsps of salt)
2 to 3 tsp. dried dill (or 2 to 3 tbs freshly minced) (I didn't have dill, so I used something called Nature's Seasonings, which is a variety of crushed dried herbs mixed together. It tasted fine)
1 tbs. mild paprika (I didn't have paprika, so I used chili powder instead)
2 tsp fresh lemon juice (no fresh lemon juice, so I used the regular lemon juice from the bottle)
3 tbs flour
2 cups water
1 cup milk (can be lowfat) ~ at room temperature (I used 1/4th cup Half & Half, 3/4th cup low fat milk)
black pepper, to taste
1/2 cup sour cream (can be reduced-fat variety) (I didn't have sour cream so I used low fat yogurt instead)
finely minced fresh parsley, for the top (I skipped this step, I'm not a huge fan of parsley)

1. Melt the butter in a kettle or a Dutch oven. Add onions, and saute over medium heat for about 5 minutes. Add mushrooms, salt, dill and paprika. Stir well and cover. Let cook for about 15 more minutes, stirring occasionally. Stir in lemon juice.

2. Gradually sprinkle in the flour, stirring constantly. Cook and stir another 5 minutes or so over medium-low heat. Add water, cover and cook about 10 minutes, stirring often.

3. Stir in milk; add black pepper to taste. Check to see if it needs more salt. Whisk in the sour cream, and heat very gently. Don't boil or cook it after this point. Serve hot, topped with freshly minced parsley.