Baked Potato Soup

So, we've all been kind of terrible about posting recipes. But, this one was really good and I want to remember how I did it!

Baked Potato Soup

Ingredients:

-          4 Large Baking Potatoes

-          1 Tbsp Olive Oil

-          ½ Medium Onion Diced

-          3-4 Medium Carrots Diced.

-          1/3 Cup Butter (I saved some of my bacon grease and used it instead of half of the butter.)

-          1/3 Cup Flour

-          3 Cups Milk

-          ½ Cup Crumbled Bacon

-          ½ Cup Sour Cream

-          Salt and pepper

-          Cheddar cheese and chopped green onion for garnish.

1.       Wash potatoes and pierce skin with a fork. Bake in 350 degree oven for 45-60 minutes.

2.       Once the potatoes are cool enough to handle, scoop out the middle and dice into bite size pieces.

3.       Place olive oil in small sauce pan over medium-low heat. Add the onion and carrots to the pan and allow to cook until tender.

4.       Meanwhile, melt the butter (and/or bacon grease) over medium heat in a soup pot. Stir in the flour and cook for about two minutes. Whisk in the milk SLOWLY. (Start with one tablespoon and stir until it’s completely incorporated. Then, add two tablespoons and stir, then four tablespoons...etc.) Once all the milk is incorporated bring to a low boil, stirring frequently. This may take a few minutes. Be patient. Whisk until smooth and thickened.

5.       Add the prepared potatoes, the softened carrots and onions, and the bacon bits to the milk mixture. Salt and pepper to taste (about ½ tsp each). Stir in the sour cream and cook until thoroughly heated.

6.       Serve topped with shredded cheddar cheese and chopped green onion.

More Yummy Recipes

A few weeks ago, we made three things out of the America's Test Kitchen Comfort Food Makeover Book.  They all were delicious and had tons of flavor.

The first meal we made was the General Tso's Chicken on page 116.  The thing that makes this recipe great is that you cover the chicken pieces with Corn Flakes and bake them.  I tasted one before I put the sauce on and I think that they would be awesome with some gravy and mashed potatoes.  Alex tasted one and liked them a lot.  The sauce was good, it had lots of flavor and wasn't too spicy.  It did have a bit too much garlic in it though.  It says to use 4 cloves and I used 4 big cloves.  I think next time I will use two big ones or 4 small ones.

The second meal we made was Chicken Chilaquiles on page 93.  I don't have any pictures of it because it didn't look nice and I realized later I didn't use the right kind of cheese.  So I made this on Friday afternoon up until the part where you put it in the oven and bake it.  We wanted a dinner to come home to on Sunday that all we had to do was throw it in the oven.  When we got home we put it in the oven and I put cheddar cheese on it instead of the queso fresco.  I also forgot to do the sour cream and lime mixture over it.  It was very tasty even though I messed up a few things.


The last recipe is Broccoli and Sausage Calzones on page 56.  Oh man are these good!!!  The only thing I substituted was pepper jack cheese for the mozzarella, because we have so much of it.  They taste so rich, you wouldn't think they are healthy.  It makes 2 good sized calzones and Ty and I shared one and were plenty full.  There is tons of flavor with the sausage and the cheeses all mixed together.

Easy Tomato Soup

I have a cold. It's one of those lay-on-the-couch, can't-breathe-through-my-nose types of things. I desperately wanted a bowl of soup for dinner last night, but I'd already served chicken noodle soup earlier in the week and I didn't think I could get away with making it twice. So, I decided to come up with a tomato soup recipe to try. This once is my own creation based off of several that I looked at online. It was very, very delicious. Spencer said it was the best soup I'd ever made! (Not that that's saying much, but still!).

Easy Tomato Soup

Ingredients:
2 Cans Italian Style Diced Tomatoes 
2 Tbsp Olive Oil
2 Tbsp Butter
1/2 Medium yellow onion chopped finely
 1 Tsp Minced Garlic (1 to 2 cloves)
 1/4 Cup Flour
4 Cups Chicken Stock
3/4 Cups Fat Free Half-and-Half (You could also use cream. We're just watching the calories at our house.)
1 Cup Small Pasta (Optional)

Directions
1. Put tomatoes with their juices in a blender and blend until smooth. Set aside.
2. Heat olive oil and butter over medium-low heat in a stock pot. Add the onions and cook until they are soft and translucent. Once the onions are soft, add the garlic and cook for another 10 seconds. Stir in the flour to form a roux. Allow the roux to cook for about 1 minute and then gradually incorporate the chicken stock. Increase the heat to medium-high and bring the soup up to a low boil, stirring frequently. Once the soup begins to thicken, add the pureed tomatoes. Bring to a low boil. Reduce heat to low and let simmer for at least fifteen minutes.
3. Cook pasta according to directions on package and strain (if using).
4. Once the soup has simmered for at least 15 minutes, stir in the half-and-half and the pasta. Simmer for another five to ten minutes.
5. Serve with shredded cheese and fresh basil.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies

I had to make half of a dinner for a lady in our ward that has a daughter in the NICU so I decided to try out some oatmeal cookies to go with the dinner. They were the BEST oatmeal cookie that I have ever had! They were so, so yummy. Again, this recipe came from Allrecipes.com. Unfortunately, we ate all of them before I had the chance to take a picture. That's how good they were. These cookies would be awesome to make cookie sandwiches with cream cheese frosting in the middle, if you left the chocolate chips out. That's right, I went there. I may have to try it and repost with pictures.

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookies
Ingredients: 

1 cup butter, softened

1 cup packed light brown sugar

1/2 cup white sugar

2 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla extract

1 1/4 cups all-purpose flour

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

3 cups quick-cooking oats (The instant kind)

1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

 

Directions:

1. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees F 

2. In a large bowl, cream together the butter, brown sugar, and white sugar until smooth. Beat in eggs one at a time, then stir in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking soda, and salt; stir into the creamed mixture until just blended. Mix in the quick oats and chocolate chips. Roll into balls and place on baking sheet.

3. Bake for 13 minutes in the preheated oven. Allow cookies to cool on baking sheet for 5 minutes before transferring to a wire rack to cool completely.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Thanks to Ty for starting this awesome blog! It's going to be so great to see what everyone else is cooking!

Last Sunday my Mother-in-law asked that I make a cake for strawberry shortcakes so I tried out a new pound cake recipe. Spencer doesn't really like cake, but he'll eat anything if I tell him that there is cream cheese in it so I found this recipe on Allrecipes.com. It was really rich and really good. It tasted like a shortbread/sugar cookie in cake form. I will definitely make it for strawberry shortcake again.

Cream Cheese Pound Cake

Ingredients:  

1 (8 ounce) package cream cheese

1 1/2 cups butter

3 cups white sugar

6 eggs

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions
1. Preheat oven to 325 degrees F (160 degrees C) grease and flour a 10 inch tube pan. 

2. In a large bowl, cream butter and cream cheese until smooth. Add sugar gradually and beat until fluffy.
 3. Add eggs two at a time, beating well with each addition. Add the flour all at once and mix in. Add vanilla.
 4. Pour into a 10 inch tube pan. Bake at 325 degrees F (160 degrees C) for 1 hour and 20 minutes. Check for doneness at 1 hour. A toothpick inserted into center of cake will come out clean.

We'll start the recipe sharing with our culinary creations from this week.  First, we made a steel cut oats recipe in the crock pot.  Mom inspired us last weekend with her oats, so we wanted some for the week.

We added 3 cups of water for every cup of oats.  We also tossed in some salt, brown sugar, and cinnamon and let them go for 8 hours on low in the crock pot.  The oats turned out well - they had good flavor and were thick.  They had a consistency sort of like tapioca - almost too soft.  There were also quite a few oats that stuck to the bottom and sides, so it felt kind of wasteful.   Other than that, they tasted great and it is a fine way to do it.  Here is a picture:

The second recipe that we have to share came from my recent trip to South Dakota.  I had a bruschetta salad at a place in Sioux Falls that I loved and wanted to create.  To make the salad:

1.  Grill or cook one chicken breast, then after it cools shave it into very thin slices - as thin as you can get them going across the grain.
2.  In a bowl, whisk about 3 tablespoons each of extra virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar (the quality of the vinegar makes a difference, I think - get the good stuff).  Add a pinch of salt and a little black pepper to taste.  Spike it with another dash or two of vinegar until it tastes good to you.
3.  Cut 2-3 tomatoes into 1/4 inch slices, and then cut the slices into quarters.  You can seed the tomatoes before slicing them if you want to get fancy, or not worry about it (like me).
4.  Chop a handful of spinach into ribbons about 1/3 inch wide
5.  Combine all of the ingredients and dressing together in a bowl and mix to coat all of the stuff with the balsamic goodness.  Set aside.
6.  Cut 12 thin slices of a good hard bread like ciabatta.  We used ciabatta and it worked great.  Spread the slices on a wire rack and put the rack on a sheet pan.  Sprinkle some cheese (parmesan is best - not the junky fake kraft parmesan powder) on each bread slice.  Turn on broiler in oven to low.  Place the pan of slices on a middle rack - not too close to the broiler.   As soon as the cheese starts to bubble and bread starts to toast, turn off the broiler and turn the oven on to 375.  Bake for another 3-5 minutes or until the bread is fully toasted.  This will help the underside of the bread to toast as well.
7.  Put a mound of the salad onto a plate and arrange the bread slices around it.  Scoop the salad with the bread to eat.

This salad was awesome.  I really like to eat things that you can scoop up with bread, so this was great for me.  Also, it is really fast and very easy.  If you haven't used balsamic vinegar before, you can get it anywhere.  Costco sells a great one, although you end up with a lifetime supply.   Some of the Kneaders breads would make great bruschetta.

Finally, Erin made up the Shepherd's Pie out of the America's Test Kitchen Makeovers cook book.  It was awesome - great flavor and really good way to use ground beef (which we still have a ton of from the cow).  It was really cool looking, very rich, and you couldn't tell that it wasn't horrible for you.  I had guilt-free seconds.  Here is the picture: