Potato Soup

Wednesday, 8:38 pm

By Kate

Feb

27

2008

When the north winds blow....or not. It’s still tasty. This was an experimental recipe incorporating ideas from three separate recipes. Turned out really well. It’s one of the lad’s favorite dishes now. Mine, too, for that matter. It is most likely not heart friendly, but once in a while, y’know. I’ve been meaning to post this since Christmas....

Ingredients:
3 cups chicken stock
1 cup milk
1 cup heavy cream
1 1/2 cups potato water
1/4 cup bacon fat
2 stalks of celery, quartered
3 large leeks, sliced
handful of small white boiling onions, peeled and left whole
8 slices of bacon, crumbled
8 small potatoes, quartered
6 medium potatoes, cubed
3 tablespoons of butter
shredded cheddar cheese
parsley
cracked pepper to taste

Peel your potatoes and cut up per instructions above. In a stock pot, cover the 8 quartered potatoes with water and boil until crisp tender. Pour off potato water and reserve 1 1/2 cups. Mash potatoes lightly.

In a pan, cook bacon until easily crumbled. Remove bacon and stir fry sliced leeks in bacon fat until translucent. Along with 1/4 cup of the bacon fat, toss the leeks into the stock pot containing the lightly mashed potatoes.

Pour in 3 cups of chicken stock, 1 cup of milk, 1 cup of heavy cream, and 1 1/2 cups of potato water. Stir and bring to a simmer. Add 3 tablespoons of butter, the remaining cubed potatoes, peeled boiling onions, and quartered stalks of celery. Add celery leaves if you have any. Add cracked pepper according to taste (I used about 1 1/2 teaspoons).

Let simmer *gently* until the cubed potatoes are tender. The soup will thicken as it cooks. Stir occasionally and don’t let it boil.

Serve in deep bowls and sprinkle top with crumbled bacon and shredded cheddar cheese. Add chopped parsley, if desired.
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I cook mine on top of the wood stove and it takes about 3 hours to gently cook. It would probably cook a little faster on top of the kitchen stove. Just make sure it doesn’t more than gently simmer (barely bubbling). The longer it takes to cook, the more flavorful it is. In fact, this soup actually tastes even better the second day.

Yo-yo weather

Wednesday, 3:39 pm

By Kate

Feb

27

2008

We had a snow storm yesterday. The one we weren’t supposed to get. It snowed all day long. Pretty big fluffy flakes. The accumulation didn’t amount to that much, maybe 4 inches. It was heavy wet snow and all the trees were coated. It was pretty. Then the snow turned to drizzle in the early evening and everything turned to slush. Then the temps dropped and everything froze solid. Par for the course.

This morning the temps rose into the mid 40s. And all of yesterday’s snow and ice melted. At the moment, you’d never know that it snowed all day yesterday. The roads are clear and dry and my deck floor boards are clear and dry, too. At least they are where I shoveled a path previously. The rest of the deck is still piled high with snow.

Tonight the temps drop again. Tomorrow they drop some more and tomorrow night we’ll be back in the single digits for a brief period. But back up into the mid 40s by Saturday.

Which all goes to show that spring is trying. It’s currently losing the battle, but still valiantly trying. While spring and winter duke it out over the next few weeks, our temps will resemble a yo-yo. It’s not the most pleasant part of the year. It’s hard to acclimate when the temps jump around like that. One day is sweatshirt and vest weather and the next is long underwear and down coat weather. I just wish spring would make a break for it and arrive already. Yes, it’s too early, but I don’t care.