Kitchen Adventures 17.1

Hearty soups always sound delicious when the weather starts to cool and the leaves start to fall. The sun starts setting earlier and the nighttime chill sets in right at dinnertime. Delicious soup that warms your stomach just sounds delightful at this time of year.

Several of my cookbooks have good soup recipes, and I definitely need to make more soup, stew and stoup. I have an immersion blender now thanks to my parents, so I see more soups in my future. :) Many soups do not need an immersion blender, though, and those are the ones I typically make.

This particular recipe comes from the handy triple T youth group cookbook. The recipe was contributed by a friend's mother, and it is quite delicious. I did learn that it does awhile to make this, especially getting the soup to thicken. I think I was trying to make it thicker than it is supposed to be. I had it simmering down for at least 30 minutes, when I probably could have stopped at 15, but so it goes. You be the judge on what works best for you. This is definitely one I will make again.

Cheeseburger Soup

Ingredients:

2 lbs. hamburger
1 onion, chopped
3 cans chicken broth
3 potatoes, sliced
1 lb. Velveeta cheese
1 quart (4 cups) milk
2 T. flour
Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Brown the hamburger and onion in a skillet. Boil the potatoes and drain them. Make a thickening mixture of the flour and 1 1/2 cups milk shaken up. In a large stock pot, place the hamburger onion mixture, potatoes, broth, cheese, and the thickening mixture. Heat this until the cheese melts. Turn off the heat once the cheese melts and add in the remaining milk. Salt and pepper to taste. Stir to thicken until desired consistency.

Kitchen Adventures 6.2

I have quite a bit of catching up to do on here! The last week or so has been incredibly crazy, to put it mildly. I've been busy at work, dealing with lots of little issues there, and then finding way too many things to do with my free time. But, hanging out with my friends doing things like celebrating jobs, hitting up the monthly art walk, going to football games and out to dinner, church things, and random shopping trips make my life that much better.

All those fun things, though, keep me away from posting more frequently. For instance, this is a recipe I made about three weeks ago and just never found time to post after making it.

This is the perfect recipe for a chilly fall evening, which to me is soup weather. It also freezes decently well, and I just finished it off this week by sharing with a few friends for dinner one night. I got this one from a binder my Aunt Kathie gave me a couple Christmases ago. She had it at Thanksgiving and showed everyone and I just had to have a copy. I'm not sure where she got the recipes, but if anyone wanted the source for this one I could ask. It's a good one for sure!

A couple notes I learned the first time I made this that made this go-round much better. First, make sure you chop your potatoes to a fairly standard size, that way the chunks cook the same amount. Second, make sure you have the potatoes chopped, onions chopped, and bacon cooked and crumbled before starting the flour and butter. You will not have enough hands to chop, stir, and crumble all at the same time! Finally, you will have to stir for awhile to get the milk to thicken. I probably could have stirred it a little bit more, but it turned out fine.

Baked Potato Soup

Ingredients:

2/3 c. butter or margarine
4 sliced green onions (I omitted these)
1 c. sour cream
1 1/4 c. shredded cheddar cheese (I used a little more)
7 c. milk
12 cooked, crumbled bacon strips
2/3 c. flour
4 lg. baking potatoes OR hash browns (I used potatoes)

Directions:

Chop potatoes and onions and cook bacon. In a large soup kettle or dutch oven, melt the butter. Add in flour, heat and stir until smooth. Gradually add milk, stirring constantly until thickened. Add potatoes and onions. Bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes. Add remaining ingredients, stir until cheese is melted.