Potato Soup

This is the perfect solution if you have potatoes that you need to use pretty quickly.  I had about five pounds of russets that were approaching expiration and I’m not a fan of throwing food out.  I can tell you that they were quite happy to become soup instead of trash.

Here’s what you need:

Potatoes

Chicken broth

Water

Onion

Garlic

Salt

Chives

Flour

Milk

Sour cream

Peel and dice the potatoes.  Heat the chicken broth and water in a large pot on the stove.  The mixture should be at least half water, more if you want to go easy on the broth.  Add the potatoes to the water/broth mixture and bring them to a boil.  Lower the heat and allow the potatoes to cook until they are soft, stirring occasionally.

When the potatoes are soft, return them to a boil.  Begin sprinkling flour into the pot a little at a time.  After each addition, stir well to ensure that the flour is dissolved before adding more.  Continue adding small amounts of flour until the soup reaches the desired thickness.  Keep in mind that it will continue to thicken after it has finished cooking.

Add fresh garlic (or garlic powder if you don’t have fresh), chives, finely chopped onion and salt to taste.  Finish up with a splash of milk and a big dollop of sour cream. 

Combine everything thoroughly and let the soup cook on the lowest setting for another half hour.

Suggestions: If you don’t have chicken broth, use beef or vegetable.  You can also skip the broth entirely, if you want.  Try serving it with crumbled bacon on top to jazz it up a little.

Serve with a simple salad and some crusty bread for a complete meal.

Butternut Squash & Sausage Soup

Hats off to Brianne for inspiring this most awesome of dishes!  She mentioned her soup on Facebook and I became immediately obsessed with making my own.  She used a recipe from Emeril, which I immediately googled (for inspirational purposes only, of course).  Emeril is one of my favorite chefs and I've always found his recipes to be reliable.  Don't you hate it when recipes just don't work?  Me, too.  I've never had that problem with Emeril's stuff, though.  But I digress.  Enough about Emeril.  Back to the amazing soup I made.

After checking out a couple of recipes, I set out to decide what my version was going to look like.  I even dreamed about it the other night.  Yeah, I know.  That's weird.  At least I'll be able to sleep now since I finally made the soup.  Needless to say, it was a huge success.  It's also very low in calories.

Here's what you'll need:

1 butternut squash
4 cups of chicken broth
2 uncooked bratwurst or other bun-sized sausages
1 cup of 2% milk
2/3 cup of wild rice
Seasonings to taste (salt, pepper & Jane's Crazy Mixed Up Salt)

Peel the squash and remove the seeds.  I recommend a potato peeler.  The squash is hard like a sweet potato and peeling it with a knife turned out to be a bad idea.  Cut your peeled squash into small pieces and place them in a large stock pot.  Add the chicken broth and bring to a boil. 

While the squash is boiling, cut the casing of your sausage and squeeze the meat out into a skillet.  Brown it just like you would hamburger meat.  When the meat is finished, drain it well on paper towels.

When the squash pieces are soft, use a potato masher to squish them up really well.  The squash gets very soft very fast so mashing it is quite easy.  Add the milk and stir to combine.  Reduce the heat to simmering and add the rice and the sausage.  Cover the pot and let it cook until the rice is ready.  When the rice is completely cooked, add your seasonings to taste.

You may have noticed that I provided (gasp) actual measurements this time.  I'm afraid that's an unfortunate by-product of Michael's new diet.  I can't keep up with the calorie count if I don't know how much of each ingredient I'm using.  I'm like a child forced to color inside the lines when I desperately want to scribble all over the paper.  Sigh.

The good news is that this recipe makes four decent sized portions, each of which weighs in at around 210 calories.  Michael decided that he could eat a whole pot twice a day and still have 300 calories left to play with.   Not.