Recipe: Potato Soup

I had some not-great luck with a recipe for cashew chicken the other night, and was feeling somewhat defeated (even though my sweet husband told me it was fine). I needed a win. Potato soup, how could you go wrong? YOU CAN'T. Trust me on this one. About halfway through the process, I was like "this is going to be a gross mistake" but I was wrong. It was amazing and delicious and so easy and I ate so much I had to unbutton my pants. Yeah, that good. I don't know what your pantries / freezers look like, but this was all stuff I had on hand, so that's an added bonus, and I imagine it would freeze really well.

You could do this in the slow cooker, but I decided to make it for dinner at 6pm so I made it on the stove top. You also could use vegetable broth and cream of mushroom soup to make this vegetarian. And finally, you could use low fat / low sodium everything EXCEPT the cream cheese. Don't do that, it won't melt.

Recipe was inspired by Pearls, Handcuffs and Happy Hour (I seem to be using a lot of her recipes for inspiration recently).

Ingredients

• Bag of frozen shredded hash browns (between 24-30oz)
• 2 cans chicken broth (28-32 oz total)
• 1 can cream of chicken soup (approx 14oz)
• 1/4 large onion, finely diced 
• 1/4 tsp black pepper (more or less to taste)
• 1 block of cream cheese (approx 8oz)
• Optional toppings: sour cream, shredded cheese, chopped green onions, chopped bacon

Directions

1. Add hash browns, broth and soup to a large stock pot; cook on medium heat until all the hash browns are loose
2. Add onions and pepper; reduce to medium-low heat and cook for 30 minutes, stirring regularly (hash browns will start to dissolve and get very mushy)
3. Add cream cheese and cook for another 30 minutes, stirring regularly, or until cream cheese is completely melted and hash browns are very mushy - almost dissolved

Recipe: Baked Gnocch' & Cheese

You know what's so annoying? When a recipe has the ingredients listed not-at-all in the order they're using. I'm constantly having to scroll up and down on my phone to see quantities and make sure I didn't miss anything .. and you know I normally miss at least one ingredient somehow. Once I accidentally added red bell pepper to a dish instead of crushed red pepper. But whatever, it works.

So we had some company Friday night and with the craziness of work, I had absolutely nothing planned for dinner. Somehow, this got thrown together. So rich, but so delicious. Perfect iced-in sort of meal (yeah, we had an "ice storm", what of it?)

I sort-of used this as a guide. And forgot to take any pictures before we devoured it, so photo credit goes to CookingStoned.TV. Wow, really? That's the name? Eh, makes sense.

Ingredients

• 1 lb gnocchi
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1/2 tsp garlic powder
• 1 tbsp flour
• 3/4 cup buttermilk
• 1 tsp Dijon mustard
• 1/4 cup shredded cheddar
• 1/4 cup shredded mozzarella
• Grated Parmesan

Directions

1. Preheat oven to 375
2. Add gnocchi to pot of boiling water and boil for two minutes, then drain
3. Meanwhile, melt butter in a small sauce pan over medium low heat
4. While whisking constantly, add garlic powder, then flour, then buttermilk, then cheeses in small handfuls until completely melted
5. Spread cooked gnocchi in a small, lightly greased baking dish (I used 8x8)
6. Cover with cheese mixture
7. Top with Parmesan
8. Bake for 25 minutes