Quick Baked Potato Soup

After making the stuffed potato skins last week, I found myself with a Tupperware container full of baked potatoes in the refrigerator and nothing to do with them. Since I am making a conscious effort not to throw food away, I knew I needed to create something.

The weekend ended up being very cold and rainy, and what is better to eat during bad weather than a hot bowl of soup? After checking what was available in my pantry, this is what I used:

Quick Baked Potato Soup

1 quart fat-free & low sodium chicken broth
2 T. cornstarch
1/4 c. sour cream
1/4 c. half and half
1 t. black pepper
1 t. paprika
2 c. chopped baked potatoes (approximately)

Toppings: shredded cheddar cheese, chopped scallions and crumbled bacon (I used the pre-cooked microwaveable kind to keep it simple.)

- Whisk the cornstarch, sour cream, and half and half with a small amount of chicken broth.

- Stir the cornstarch mixture and the remaining chicken broth into a large pot and heat to boiling (it must boil briefly for the cornstarch to thicken the liquid).

- Turn the heat to medium low, stir in the potatoes, and let simmer until the potatoes are heated through and the soup is thickened.

- Top with the cheese, scallions, and bacon.

This recipe was quick, satisfying, and filling for a very small amount of work. The only downside is that the leftovers become extremely thick after refrigeration. If you try this recipe and have leftovers, make sure you have some extra stock on hand to thin it back out when reheating.

Enjoy!

CEiMB: Broccoli & Cheddar Stuffed Potato Skins with Avocado Cream

Hi everyone! It’s been awhile. I know I haven’t posted in several weeks, and I’ll keep the sob story short: basically, my laptop crashed and my job is killing me. Just kidding! I love my job, but it does take a lot out of me. However, I have been cooking and photographing, just not posting. Hopefully I will come back from the upcoming Christmas break (yay, two weeks off) refreshed and ready to do some more consistent blogging!

I wanted to come back with this CEiMB pick because I remember seeing it on the list awhile back and thinking that it sounded great! This week we made Broccoli & Cheddar Stuffed Potato Skins with Avocado Cream, and this recipe was hosted by Anne at Rainforest Recipes.

One of the reasons I was looking forward to this recipe is that is incorporates broccoli, something that Scott and I eat 3-4 times a week. In fact, I think it has made several appearances in the background of other recipe pictures in my posts. We enjoy broccoli, but eating it steamed with a light sprinkling of salt every time gets old.

Like several of the Ellie Krieger recipes we have made in the past, I found this one to have a lot of steps and resulted in a large pile of dirty dishes. It was worth it, though, because these potato skins were quite tasty! The only changes I made were to use real bacon instead of Canadian bacon and to add the lime zest to the avocado cream in addition to the juice.

Isn’t my prep board for the avocado cream lovely? I thought all of those beautiful shades of green deserved their own picture.

The avocado cream was very good, and I would like to use it as a substitute for traditional guacamole in the future. I also want to make the cream again with a ripe avocado – I waited until today to purchase one and all of the ones at the grocery store were quite under ripe – because my version today never really came together in the food processor.

Thanks to Anne for a great pick! I plan on adding this one to my regular rotation for some variety with my vegetable side dishes.

On another note, Miss Shelby has proven herself to be the perfect dog for a foodie owner. We have not been giving her human food at all, but when I dropped a piece of cilantro on the floor today, she snapped it right up and looked for more!

Isn’t she growing quickly? She’s so cute!

Steak and potatoes (and a huge salad)

I was planning on making this for lunch on Sunday while my parents were still here, but it ended up as Monday's dinner for me and the boyfriend. First, I made the Crash Hot Potatoes from The Pioneer Woman:



The herbs are interchangeable in this recipe, and I had chives and parsley in my fridge. That picture was taken before baking.

For the salad, I took my basic salad mix (lettuce, spinach, red cabbage, red onion, and cucumber) and added blue cheese and the purple tomato from the farmers' market. I grilled a London broil and sliced it thinly to top the salad. I also added a small handful of walnuts and some Kalamata olives to my salad and topped it all off with some EarthFare olive oil and balsamic vinaigrette.

My plate, with the baked potatoes:

There was a big serving of the salad leftover, so that will be lunch tomorrow. See you then!