Cold Winter day...Hot bowl of soup

It's a cold and deary day so naturally I'm craving soup. Not just any soup but Loaded Bake Potato Soup. This is one of my favorites and it is so easy to make. But seriously there is nothing better on a cold winter day than a big bowl of homemade soup

Ingredients:

1 small onion diced
2 T minced garlic
2 T butter
6-10 russet potatoes, cleaned and cubed (peel optional)
4 cups chicken stock (homemade preferably)
2 cups heavy cream
2 cups shredded cheese
4 strips of crispy bacon crumbled
salt & pepper to taste
chives for garnish

Saute the onion and garlic with the butter until the onion in translucent.
Add chicken stock and potatoes (you can add a many or as little potato as you want. I tend to like mine potato heavy so I normally add about 10 good sized potatoes. I leave a little peel for flavor)
Cover and cook on medium low until potatoes are fork tender. You don't want to over cook them or they will turn to mush.
Add heavy cream and heat through. Be careful not to let it boil.
Slowly add shredded cheese, stirring to make sure it melts all the way through. (You can use any type you like...colby jack is a good standard. My favorite is applewood smoked Gruyere and  applewood smoked Gouda - about two to one ratio)
Once cheese is melted add salt, pepper and 3/4s of the bacon.

Serve with a sprinkling of chives and remainder of the bacon.

Trust me you'll love this soup!

Cookie Adventures!

The past few years I have been helping my mom bake cookies to give out as gifts. Last year it was my sister, her and I doing the mad cookie experiment. This year it was my mom, my aunt and I. it was fun, tiring but fun. And we made a lot of cookies...like 33 dozen or so.

We started around 7:30 am and my aunt and I left at 4, leaving my mom to finish baking the last few remaining trays. It is always an adventure baking with my mom. She does a few things like her rum cake really well but then it gets interesting. Like last year thinking one box of butter and one 5 pound bag of flour was going to be enough butter for the 10 different types she wanted to make.

This yeas she was a little bit better. I had warned my aunt ahead of time so we came with extra flour, butter, sugar and eggs. So when we arrived, my mom is already flustered with the sugar cookie dough as it is incredibly sticky. She didn't want to wait so she made a package of sugar cookies (I despise the package cookie mix but I digress). She was trying to roll out cookie dough on wax paper. Yes you read that right. Gotta love her. So I take over and the dough is really sticky...too sticky but I make it work and get about 3 dozen star shaped cookies cut out for her. Found out that she used tub margarine instead of stick butter for the recipe...which was the culprit.

See you never want to use tub margarine for baking if you can help it. If you have to use margarine always go for it in the stick form. It's the consistency in the tub stuff that makes it more sticky and spread more. 

It became apparent at that moment that I was going to be in charge of making the cookie doughs, especially since I brought my KitchenAid mixer with me. That baby can whip through making cookie dough like there is no tomorrow. I swear I love my KitchenAid. I whip up a batch of vanilla wafer cookies and as we are baking them my mom brings out all these bags of chips that she wants to use in the cookies. The three of us start talking flavors and then my aunt and I talk Mom out of putting the butterscotch and peanut butter chips in the same cookie...see this is why I was in charge of making the dough.

By the end of the day we made:
3 dozen sugar stars
6 dozen vanilla wafer cookies
5 dozen chocolate chip, walnut and heath bar cookies
5 dozen chocolate chip and toffee cookies
4.5 dozen peppermint white chocolate cookies
4.5 dozen oatmeal butterscotch cookies
5 dozen peanut butter cookies with peanut butter chips

I like the oatmeal butterscotch cookies the best. I got the dough just right so they spread out lovely and came out almost like the oatmeal lace cookies.

I'm Baaaaack

I'm fickle and I know this. I forget to update for a bit and then it starts to seem overwhelming...so I put it off a bit longer and longer and before I know it a full season or two has passed us by. 

BUT...I'm going to make a concentrated effort to update this a lot more often.

The most thing of note has been that my jam making has really taken off. I've made another batch or two of strawberry jam since my first attempt. I've also made strawberry peach and a citrus marmalade. The strawberry peach tastes so good but I didn't add enough pectin so it is still on the thinner side. My husband loves this one. The citrus marmalade was interesting. My husband likes it but I don't think it is quite sweet enough (but that is what he likes the most about it). But that turned out much thicker...the draw back was the sugar caramelized a lot more so it was darker than what I'm used to seeing in the store.

I did get a jar funnel and a jar gripper. Those two little tools have made a world of difference! No more burnt fingers! Yay! No longer is it such an ordeal when it comes to the sealing process.

I plan on making a make of strawberry peach for the husband this afternoon as soon as my fruit is thawed out enough for me to chop. It was going to be plain peach but I realized that my last set of mason jars where not the half pint size. And we are giving half pint jars as our Yule gifts to our friends. So maybe the peach will happen next week. I still have a large about of whole peaches in my freezer from the summer...not to count my countless bags of strawberries. Come next spring I want to get some raspberries and blackberries to combine with my strawberries for a triple berry jam. Now that sounds so yummy.