Mom's Cheesy Potatoes on a diet

One of my favorite dishes in the world, my Mom's Cheesy Potatoes.  It's like crack to me, cheese and potatoes are my ultimate weakness.  It's something that without a strict diet I could easily mow down half the pan in one sitting.  (I'm pretty sure I have in fact done this) And I'm not the only one, last time I made it I had maybe two servings and the rest was eaten within 24 hours by two people.  This recipe makes 12 servings.  And my servings are normal people size servings, not one of those stupid "Serving Size" of one package of Raman Noodles apparently is for 2 people. Ridiculous I say!

I found this pretty awesome website where you can not only add your recipes to share but also just put in your recipes to just calculate nutritional information.  I highly suggest it if you have recipes that call for a lot of things you can't just look on the back of the box to see how many calories it is. Spark Recipes Calculator Website  Converting a recipe to a lower calorie version in most cases is relatively easy, I wouldn't suggest it when baking because that's a science and putting in different ingredients can sometimes be disastrous.  For me when making this recipe I pretty much when buying the ingredients looked around to see what options I had for lower calories.  Campbell's does make a reduced fat Cream of Chicken soup, it took a bit of searching but I found it.  I think the only thing that I couldn't find a lower calorie version of was the actual potatoes.

So here's the promised recipe of a reduce fat and calorie version of my Mom's Cheesy Potatoes (original recipe with nutritional info:Mom's Cheesy Potatoes )

2 lbs Frozen Hash browns, shredded are best
.5 c Margarine, melted
1 lb Reduced Fat Cheddar
1 can 98% Reduced Fat Cream of Chicken Soup
1 pt Fat Free Sour Cream
1 tsp salt
.5 tsp pepper
1 medium onion, diced
2 c crushed cornflakes

In a saucepan, melt Margarine, soup, and sour cream.  In a large bowl, combine potatoes, cheese, onion, and salt & pepper.  Pour the soup mixture over the potato mixture and mix to coat the potatoes as evenly as possible.  Pour into a 9x13 casserole pan and cover with the cornflakes. Bake 45 minutes in a 350 degree oven.

The original stats per serving of this recipe are: 512.7 calories, 36.7g Fat (yowza!), 56.3mg Cholesterol, 742.9mg Sodium, 38g Carbohydrates, and 10g Protein.  My reduced calorie version's stats in comparison: 264 Calories, 16.6g Fat (still high but in comparison way lower), 32.2mg Cholesterol, 562.3mg Sodium, 25.2g Carbohydrates, and 14.2g Protein.