Potato Cheese Soup

**Disclaimer - blogger is not publishing the spaces I put in the blog (list of ingredients, before and after photos, etc.). So, I apologize if it is a little difficult to read.** Dave loves soup. So, when he was here last week I searched through my recipes to find one (I was sure there would be some in there) and found this one with BEER as one of the ingredients. Jack pot. You need: 1 tablespoons butter 4 ounces lean ham, chopped 1 cup chopped onion 1 cup chopped carrot 8 cups peeled and chopped Yukon gold potatoes (about 3 pounds) 3 cups reduced sodium chicken broth (Grammy must have known I had high blood pressure) 1 cup beer 3/4 cup grated cheddar cheese 1/2 cup 2 percent milk (I used skim) Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the ham, onion, and carrot, and saute for ten minutes.

Then cook, covered, for another ten minutes. Add the potatoes and broth, and cover and simmer for twenty minutes, or until the potatoes are tender. I am in desperate need a a "large" saucepan. My pans are small, and we had to split it up into two of them. It worked out okay, and the next direction was to pour half the soup into a food processor (in my case, a blender) and process until smooth, so that worked out. I actually put slightly more than half, and after that I was able to pour it all into the larger of the two pots. Then you add the beer and the cheese.

Cook it until the cheese melts, which was literally less than two minutes. Next it said to add milk until the desired consistency is reached, so I poured the soup into one of my bigger mixing bowls to do that. It took a little more than the 1/2 cup listed in the directions.

It tasted great! You could definitely taste the beer in it, and the flavor made sense. I always remember a cooler of beers on my grammy's porch, and while I was cooking with my apron on sipping a Miller Lite, Dave commented that he could imagine Grammy doing the same thing in her kitchen.

Next time, pork fried rice!

Chicken Cacciatore

Sorry for the long break! Among other things, I was on vacation playing a whole lot of Mad Libs and enjoying these little guys...


But now I'm back and I'm trying to catch up on my recipes. I decided to embrace my Italian roots and try out chicken cacciatore. For this you need:

1/2 cup chopped onion
1/4 cup boiling water
1 eight-ounce can tomatoes
1/2 cup tomato puree
1 garlic clove
1 teaspoon oregano leaves
1/2 teaspoon celery seed
1/8 teaspoon pepper
4 chicken breast halves, without skin

First you cook the onion in the boiling water until tender, and do not drain. You then add the tomatoes, tomato puree, garlic, oregano, celery seed, and pepper.


Simmer for ten minutes to blend the flavors. Then place the breast halves in a heavy frying pan.


Pour the tomato mixture over the chicken. Then cook, covered, over low heat until the chicken is tender.


This will take about 30 minutes. Remove the garlic clove and serve. We made some pasta to go with it.


It was pretty good! Maybe not my favorite but a nice, simple meal that definitely tasted good. The celery seed really gave it an interesting flavor; I'm not sure I've had it much before. It wasn't the most interesting dish ever, but I am sure I will make it again.

Next time (there might be a special mid-week post to try and catch up) - potato cheese soup!

Break

Well, the sweet potato biscuits are going to have to wait. This past week and the next two are extremely hectic and I just didn't get to it. Next week I think I will have a guest blog from my mom, and for now I will leave you with this picture of me and Grammy. Enjoy :)