1. I don't eat soup much because I don't like most soups.
2. Any soups I do like are terribly bad for you and involve a lot of things you shouldn't eat, cream for example.
3. My family loves soups, so I make them and eat something else often.
4. I don't give out recipes for things because I dont USE recipes for things.
But enough about me, lets discuss my day. /laugh I woke up this morning with one goal...to make my sick and dying baby sister a lovely dinner tonight so she wouldn't have to cook anything. OK, so she isn't really dying, she just had a baby with a c-section, but I remember how that felt and how pathetically grateful I was to have Terri (my Mom-in-love) bring over large pots and dishes full of things I could feed my family right after my c-section so I wanted to do the same for her. She also isn't really my baby sister but that's a long story and this is supposed to be about soup!
Moving on. I woke up and planned to start some potato soup and then go do errands and then finish the soup and take it to her house and kiss the baby...probably her too but the baby is newer. Anyway the first thing I saw was that it was noon! HORRORS! I didn't have enough time for the soup to cook before I had to leave to see her! /panic mode
I leapt out of bed calling frantically for Demian to help me and planning how I could speed up this process. Oh, and I should backtrack and say that I've been experimenting with new foods recently so I also didn't have the normal stuff I would usually use to make this soup. Normally I would take something I knew was good to someone else for them to eat....let us all hope this comes out OK.
So I dashed out and cut up the leeks (remember trying new foods? I had no onions!!) and garlic (not normal garlic I had decided to try already cut up) and then cut the potatoes really tiny so they would soften quickly, opened the corn (wait..creamed corn? where is the regular corn??) and cut up some ham and threw everything in some chicken stock I was planning to use for something else. Now usually I boil the potatoes and drain them and kinda smoosh them and put them in...but no time no time!! I turned the heat on medium and ran out the door to my errands.
I find golden and red potatoes get soft a lot faster in cooking than white, plus we like the flavor of the skins which are a lot thinner.
Upon entering the car I realized that our power had gone on and off in the night and our clocks were all wrong. It was actually 9:30. /sigh This is what I get for not turning my computer on first thing! So I did my errands and came back.
At least the soup looked like it was cooking nicely. You can see the chunks of potato and ham and the corn. Its watery at this point because it cooks down a lot.
Whilst I was gone my quick thinking hubby turned the heat down. Everything had started to burn because Seri had wandered by and thought the burner should be on high instead of medium. I have an old stove and the burner controls are push buttons that sit low on the front. Hurray for 1940s child safety standards!
So after fixing all the clocks I set about smashing up the soup. Now normal people would probably use a potato masher, but for some reason I never think to buy one, and in any case I like lumps in my soup so I just kinda smooshed the potatoes against the side of the pan with my wooden spoon. Then I added some 1/2 and 1/2...well I meant to add half and half, but see I had sent Demian to the store with Samantha and Tucker. Which is why I had cream corn instead of corn, and apparently heavy whipping cream instead of half and half!
I love that my husband and my kids go shopping for me when I'm tired, but occasionally they being home things that are not exactly what I ordered! -=P
At this point I was just getting frustrated with the entire process, so I said to myself screw it!, and dumped in the heavy cream. Heated it all up, added a bit of salt and pulled some out for a taste test...and its delicious!! Whew what a relief. It didn't really come out as soup though, I'd guess its more like a chowder, but the texture is nice and the flavor is wonderful. So now I'm off to take my soup that isn't soup, to my sick and dying baby sister who isn't sick OR my sister! Its been a very Nancy day -=) Oh and I included the recipe (kinda) if you want to try this soup yourself.
All finished and packed for travel! I love how the yellow corn and red potato skins peek out of the thick white sauce. Food should be pretty, don't you think?
Actually Demian just commented that this looks like vomit, but we'll ignore him because he's gobbling a bowlful as we speak!
Nancy's Potato Soup
Get out a large pan
Drop a bit of olive oil in (or butter or PAM or whatever) - heat
Add some leeks or onions or scallions I used about 1 1/2 leeks - saute until you get tired of waiting
Add garlic (how much ever you like) - saute some more
Add chicken broth or water I used about 3 cups
corn or creamed corn or no corn if you forgot to buy some
ham, hot dogs, bacon, left over roast beef, or none if you don't eat meat
potatoes, white or red or yellow, and peel or not its your choice! I used about 8 cause they were small
Heat all that to a boil and keep boiling until everything is soft and a lot of the water is gone
Smoosh (yes that is an actual cooking technique) the potatoes until they are the consistency you want, I prefer semi-chunky - yes that is also a proper cooking term -=P
Add in milk or half and half or heavy whipping cream...I've used them all and they are all good. ~ heat gently until its all warm...don't boil or the milk part gets all oogly (OK I made up that one)
Salt to taste (I use garlic and onion salt)
Serve with rolls or croissants, or french bread, or a personal favorite (before I stopped eating bread) those puffy breads that you hollow out and dump the soup into.
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