teacher by day - chef by night
These are my “sunshine on a cloudy day”. Because today, March 23, 2011 we had our second snow day of the week and almost 6 inches of “snowball snow” fall outside my window! I decided to make myself a breakfast skittle breakfast (you know: potato, …
I enjoy being crafty… which is why I love cooking so much – I get to “craft” tasty treats which hopefully look awesome, but if they don’t then you just eat them up quickly and enjoy the taste while forgetting the looks!
A few weeks ago we had a “quiet” day planned for Rich to study for his GMAT exam (he ended up scoring in the 75% percentile – more on that later) and my parents were going to join us to see the High School production of Robin Hood for which I did the props. I wanted to cook something yummy while Rich studied and wanted to start with potato & bacon…. settled on inventing my own “beer cheese soup”.
As the day went on I kept tasting & adding and inventing (also deciding we needed to have biscuits to go along with it). Well, in the long run – we had a large pot of soup, called my folks to come over, and decided that I had made what ended up being one of the most amazing “Loaded Baked Potato Soups” ever!
I started off my cutting up a whole package of bacon into about 1″ pieces & throwing the whole thing into the pot (high sided pan – whatever) & cooking that down 90% of the way. Then I drained off all the fat & put the bacon aside. I then added 2 chopped onions & 4 chopped potatoes. To that pan went (5??) cloves of garlic, a bottle of beer (Sam Adams dark something) and some chicken stock. (I don’t make my own chicken stock – but hate storing so many cans since I use it all the time – so I am a big fan of the dry bullion powder & then just pouring water right from my tea pot & having the stock make itself in the pot.) Pepper and spices went as the day went on, at some point I chopped 2 chicken breasts into small bite-sized pieces and cooking that in a separate pan (with some bacon for flavor) before throwing that in the soup. About 15 minutes before serving I added some milk & about 8 oz of cheddar/monterey jack cheeses. Top the whole thing off with some scallions & a little more cheese & perfect!
(Sorry for the really “cruddy” directions – I spent way to just time cooking the way I often do with “a little of this” and “a little of that” that I did not really pay that close of attention. The above directions/recipe should get you close if you want to give it a shot. This is one of those things that you just have to taste & play it by ear.)
My Soup Theory…
You can’t go wrong when making soup! And if you think you went wrong, it just means that you are changing directions!
After our pumpkin carving fun died down we all needed to get some sleep, but eventually the dogs decided it was time for us (and our guests eventually) to get up! I wanted to make something tasty but without working too hard and had been …