Recipe 3: Potato Soup

Recipe Number: 3
Cookbook: Dinnertime by Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman)
Cuisine: American
Category: Soup
Pros: Pretty simple to make, makes a large amount (enough to eat and enough to freeze), tasty comfort food
Cons: crappy Iphone photo, had to peel potatoes (which is like the number one reason I rarely cook with potatoes)

So I've been slacking on the blogging in the past week, but have still been meeting my goal of cooking 2 new recipes a week! I made this on Sunday the 16th so it totally counted for my second week of the challenge. 

I had been craving comfort food and soup all week long, and with a slight dip in temperatures in the evenings, this seemed like an easy match. I even got my sous chef to help me a little by using the "if you help me, you get to eat faster" motivation. My husband cooked and drained the chopped bacon for me while I finished chopping all the veggies and peeling/dicing the taters. Recipe calls for 6 pieces of bacon, which he was surprised to find didn't yield many bacon bits to top soup with. Agreed...bacon needs to be bigger/less pricey for the good stuff. 

This recipe is pretty simple overall, and didn't require hours of simmering like some soup recipes do. Don't be alarmed that it doesn't look very creamy at first. You basically saute the veggies and taters for a few minutes, add stock and boil it until the potatoes are done. Then you puree it (in my case, I blended it since I don't have one of those fancy immersion blenders). So, it didn't really resemble a cream of potato soup like what's in the picture until the end, but that's ok! I opted to blend the entire recipe of soup (instead of a few batches) because I like creamy potato soup without chunks of tater. The Pioneer Woman said you could do it either way - either blend half and leave chunks or blend the whole thing. 

This makes quite a bit of soup! The two containers pictured above are after my husband and I had dinner - and I think we each had 2 bowls apiece. I threw one in the freezer because to be honest eating soup for lunch and/or dinner is overrated after a day or two. You get sick of it and that's sad because food should be loved and appreciated!

Rating: will likely make again if the weather ever gets cold...and hey! I have some in the freezer to pull out for a quick dinner one night. 

On another note: some have suggested I post the recipes that I'm making on here, but I think there is likely a copyright legal something or other that would prevent me from doing so. Plus, what is the point of buying a cookbook if you can just find the same recipe online? I like supporting the chefs whose cookbooks I buy, and so besides the legal mumbo jumbo, I would like to protect their hard work.