Soup weather

Tonight's Menu

• Portuguese soup w/sausage, cabbage and potatoes
  

It's been really damp and chilly the past few days here -- perfect soup weather! This is one of my favorite soups for fall and winter. It's not heavy but it really warms you up and is very satisfying. The original recipe made a TON and included kidney beans, which I love but DH and the girl are allergic to. So here's my version:

1 onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, chopped
1/2 pound kielbasa or smoked beef sausage, sliced into half-moons
1/2 head of cabbage, chopped
about 6 red-skinned new potatoes, cut in chunks
4 cups beef broth
1 cup water
1 cup ketchup
1/4 cup balsamic vinegar
salt and pepper

In a large soup pot or dutch oven, saute onion and garlic in some olive oil over medium heat until softened and translucent. Add sausage and brown it just a bit. Add cabbage, potatoes, broth, water, ketchup and vinegar to the pot and bring it to the boil. Reduce heat and simmer for 45 minutes or so. Season with salt and pepper to taste before serving.

Really yummy and even better the second day!

Chili!

Tonight's Menu

• chili con carne
  
• cornbread
  

I actually made this chili last night but forgot to tell you about it! Well, we ate it tonight too so it still counts, right?

I used Martha's recipe, as usual. This time I pretty much followed it exactly except mine was about half pork and half beef. And I used Muir Glen fire-roasted tomatoes. SO good, y'all. We love this chili!

The cornbread was also my usual.

And it's true, we ARE pretty much eating nothing but soup this week! I'm in a soup mood, I guess. I've suddenly come down with a rotten cold so that's not likely to change anytime soon, either!

Soup weather

Tonight's Menu

• Portuguese soup
  
• beer bread
  

It was damp, foggy and generally yucky out today, which gave me the perfect opportunity to make something I had been craving for a while -- this delicious sausage soup! It's been forever since I've made it. The original recipe calls for potatoes but I didn't have any, so I substituted kohlrabi from the CSA instead. It really made no difference at all in the taste of the soup -- it was delicious as always!

The beer bread was leftover from a couple of nights ago, just wrapped in foil and reheated in the toaster oven. Yum!

Soup weather

Tonight's Menu

• potato soup w/roasted garlic and kale
  
• rustic peasant bread
  

Our CSA gave us a big bunch of kale recently so I thought I'd use it up in a soup, especially since the weather today was cold and yucky. This was totally an experiment, by the way, but it turned out great!

Earlier in the day, I roasted a whole head of garlic. I actually had to look up how to do this because I tend to be kind of an idiot when it comes to the basics. In case you're also basics-impaired, here's how I did it: peel the outside paper off of a head of garlic (leaving the paper on the individual cloves), cut off the top with a serrated knife so the tops of the cloves are exposed, put it on a sheet of foil, drizzle over some olive oil, wrap the clove in foil and place it on a pan of some sort (to catch drips, just in case), then put it in the oven at 400 degrees F for about 30 minutes. If I'd known it was so easy, I'd have been roasting buttloads of garlic all this time!

Anyhoo, if you do that ahead of time you can just let the garlic cool and then stick it in the fridge. To prepare the soup, I chopped two ribs of celery and a large carrot, then peeled and diced about five smallish russet potatoes. (I only just realized that we've been eating a lot of potatoes lately. Not sure what that's about, but hey, they're cheap! And full of potassium and stuff!) I put the veggies in a big pot and squeezed in the roasted garlic cloves from earlier (they slip right out of their skins), then added some vegetable stock to cover the veggies, along with a bit of fresh thyme and some freshly ground pepper. Then I just let it simmer until the veggies were tender.

While everything was simmering, I washed and trimmed a bunch of kale and chopped it up. When the veggies were tender, I used my immersion blender to de-chunkify the soup. You could also just pour the soup into a blender or food processor and then pour it back into the pan. Or heck, leave it chunky, if that's your thing! At this point I added the kale so it could wilt down. Then I adjusted my seasonings, adding more salt and pepper and tasting as I went.

At this point the soup was basically ready so I decided to make a garnish of sorts. All I did was chop up some nice, thick, smoky bacon (Pederson's apple smoked, of course) and crisp it up in a skillet. Then I removed the bacon to paper towels to drain and tossed some fresh sage leaves, which had been washed and VERY thoroughly dried, into the hot bacon fat so they'd fry and get crispy. I quickly removed those and let them drain as well. To assemble, just ladle out some soup and top with the crispy bacon and a couple of sage leaves.

This was really good! The bacon and sage kind of made the whole dish, though, which made me wish I'd just added those at the beginning! Oh well, live and learn.

The bread was purchased at the store and heated up in the oven. I totally forgot to make bread dough today! That's on the to-do list for tomorrow.

Soup!

Tonight's Menu

• bean soup with ham
  
• beer bread
  

DH and I have been in the mood for bean soup, even though he's totally allergic to it (yes, in addition to poultry and soy, he's allergic to BEANS). I had a big, meaty ham bone in the freezer (left over from Thanksgiving, see: allergic to poultry) so I decided to use that up in a nice big pot of soup.

What I did was buy one of those bags of 15-bean soup mix and discard the seasoning packet. I totally don't trust those seasoning packets, man. This one had soybean oil and hydrolyzed soy protein in it, which was reason enough for me to ditch it. (I think I had somehow convinced myself that the girl, who is violently allergic to soy, would want to try this soup. HAHAHA, what was I smoking?!)

Anyway, I kept the beans, obviously, and soaked them overnight. Then I drained and rinsed them the next day and set them aside while I got to work on the rest of the ingredients.

I chopped up half an onion and a couple of cloves of garlic and sauteed them in some olive oil in a BIG pot. Before they were able to get any color on them, I tossed in two whole fresh bay leaves, several chopped leaves of fresh sage and a bunch of fresh thyme (all from my herb patch), along with maybe half a teaspoon of smoked paprika and half a tube of sundried tomato paste (1.5-2 tablespoons). Feel free to use regular paprika and plain ol' tomato paste from a can; I was using what I had. I stirred that around for several seconds until it started to smell AMAZING, then added the ham bone to the pot and dumped in the beans, along with a quart of vegetable broth (Pacific Organic -- again, it's what I had) and another quart of water. While that was coming to a boil, I stirred in some chopped fresh parsley (from the herb patch again!) and a tablespoon or so of brown sugar. I know, that sounds weird, but brown sugar goes great with beans and ham, y'all. TRUST ME.

Once it came to a boil I reduced the heat to low and just let it simmer away uncovered all afternoon. After two hours I removed the ham bone, scraped off the meat and diced it, then added the meat back to the pot. At that point I tasted the broth and adjusted the seasonings somewhat, adding the juice of half a lemon, a bit of salt and some freshly ground pepper. Altogether I cooked it for about 4.5 hours, tasting and adding more salt/pepper as needed and removing the bay leaves at the very end. Some of the beans broke down and thickened the broth quite a bit so that it was almost stew-like, which is just how I like it. If you like your broth a little thinner and your beans with more shape to them, you might want to only cook it for about 3 hours. Just be sure to taste, taste, taste as you go -- it's the only way to know when it's done to your liking and to get the seasonings right!

The girl wouldn't touch it, and DH had just a little taste, but the boy and I LOVED it and went back for seconds. I stirred just a tiny bit of sriracha into my bowl and washed it down with a cold glass of unfiltered apple cider and it was heavenly!

The beer bread is a favorite here. I only use half the butter called for in the recipe and it comes out just fine. This time I used Shiner Hefeweizen for the beer and it yielded a very tasty loaf that went great with the soup.

I expect this soup to be even better tomorrow, so guess what we're having then? Yep, leftovers!

My favorite soup

Tonight's Menu

• loaded potato soup
  
• freshly baked bread
  

It's been chilly in the mornings here the past couple of weeks (finally!) and that means I'm craving comfort food!

I love, love, LOVE this potato soup. It's the only potato soup I make. I use full-fat dairy in this but you could lighten it up and even use turkey bacon if you like. It wouldn't be as GOOD, but whatever floats your boat!

The bread was just a boule from the book.

Perfect fall supper, if you count potatoes as a vegetable. Which I do.

Another catchup post

Oh, people! I didn't realize it had been so long since I posted. Sorry about that! I have not been making much of anything new for dinner, but have instead been revisiting some cool-weather favorites. (Yes, I KNOW it's still in the 90s here. But the calendar says September so I am cooking fall food anyway!)

Here's what we've been eating the past couple of weeks:

• Martha's chili
  
• Baked potato soup
• DH's favorite Swiss steak
• Shrimp and sausage gumbo with fresh okra from the CSA
• Grilled Italian sausages
• Chicken fajitas (it's finally COOL enough to grill in the evenings!)
• Lots of homemade pizzas!

The CSA has been giving us various shelled beans (this time it was a big bag of butter beans) and I've been mostly cooking them up with bacon, onion, brown sugar and vinegar because we LOVE them like that.

We've also gotten some winter squash lately and at first I had no idea what to do with it! These are sort of the "ugly pumpkin" variety squash -- vaguely pumpkin-shaped but all mottled and weird looking on the outside. (Er, I mean weird in a GOOD way. My taste in squash is similar to my taste in shoes, apparently.) I finally decided to cut them into wedges, plop them into a baking pan (after scooping out the seeds), drizzle with honey and cinnamon and bake them off at 375 degrees F for about two hours or until they were really soft and tender. They were delicious and my house smelled AMAZING while they were cooking! I've been eating them as a side dish with various meats, stirring them into oatmeal along with raw pumpkin seeds or slivered almonds, and now I'm wondering how they'd be in muffins and/or pancakes.

My birthday was the 20th of this month and DH gifted me with something I've been wanting FOREVER -- a 6-quart enameled cast-iron Dutch oven! So I foresee a LOT more soups/stews/roasts in my immediate future. Hooray!

Father's Day dinner

Tonight's Menu

• seafood-sausage gumbo
  
• rice
  

Yes! It was gumbo for Father's Day over here. I made it pretty much the same way as last time, including chickening out on the roux before it was really dark enough. Oh well. It was still very tasty, and the onions, garlic, okra (fresh this time -- add it with the other veggies at the beginning) and green peppers were from the CSA. And the bay leaves were from my little bay tree! Can't get much more local than your own back patio, eh?

The rice was just plain white long-grain, cooked on my microwave's "smart" setting. You put it in the bowl and pour the gumbo over top. Yum!

Crappy weather = chili for dinner

Tonight's Menu

• chili con carne
  
• beer bread
  

You know, I was never conscious of how much the weather affects my cooking mood until I started keeping this blog. Today it was rainy and just kind of gross, so I made chili. It was a chili sort of day, I guess.

Once again, I riffed off of Martha Stewart's chili con carne recipe. This time I actually followed the thing pretty closely for a change, except that I used all beef for the meat and I didn't add any salt at all until the very end. Oh and I used my favorite Muir Glen fire-roasted tomatoes, which are so awesome in chili because of the added smokiness.

Beer bread was the usual also, using only 1/4 cup butter instead of 1/2. Because it makes me feel all virtuous, that's why. We LOVE this bread, y'all. We don't drink that much beer around here, but I've taken to buying it just so I can make this bread. Is that wrong?

Apart from the sliced green onions we used to top the chili, I couldn't be bothered to make a vegetable tonight. Some nights are like that!

Chili today, ... uh, still chili tomorrow, probably!

Tonight's Menu

• chili con carne
  
• beer bread
  
• green salad "bar"
  

A cold front blew through central Texas last night, leaving us with chilly temperatures and a blustery wind today -- perfect chili weather! My go-to recipe for chili is this one from Martha Stewart, but I have yet to actually make it exactly as written. Here's how I made today's version.

canola oil
2-3 lbs. beef shoulder or chuck, cut into teensy dice (not quite a mince, but almost)
1 large sweet yellow onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbs ancho chili powder
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 bay leaf
1 (28 oz.) can Muir Glen Organic Fire-Roasted Crushed Tomatoes (feel free to use whichever crushed tomatoes you like, or whole tomatoes whizzed in the blender)
2 (12 oz.) bottles beer (use a beer you would actually drink; I went with Dos Equis Amber)
coarse salt
1 Tbs white vinegar

Okay, once you've chopped/diced/minced the hell out of everything, begin browning the beef in batches in a big pot with a little canola oil. You'll be removing each batch of meat to a plate as it gets browned, and adding more oil as needed. Once all the meat is browned, dump the onions and garlic into the pot and stir over medium heat until they've gone a bit soft (DO NOT burn the garlic!). Then add the chili powder, cumin, oregano and bay leaf in with the onions and garlic, cooking and stirring for about a minute until it all goes nice and fragrant. Add the meat back into the pan, along with the tomatoes and beer. Bring it to a boil and then reduce heat and simmer uncovered, stirring occasionally, for about 2 hours or until the meat is tender and the broth has thickened a bit. Remove the bay leaf, salt to taste and stir in the vinegar (I have no idea what the vinegar is supposed to do, but Martha says to add it and I must obey). I serve this with shredded cheddar and sliced green onions on the side. Yum!

The beer bread is SO super easy to make, and so good! I use this recipe (with only 1/4 cup of butter) and it comes out perfect. Again, you will want to use a beer you would actually drink. DH is a fan of wheat beers and they work really well in this recipe. Tonight it was a bottle of Leinenkugel's Sunset Wheat, which made the bread a little bit sweet and almost cake-like. Delicious!

Astute readers will note that tonight's dinner contained THREE BOTTLES of beer. And that's not including the beer with which we washed it all down. Perhaps that had something to do with how delicious we found this particular meal!

There was no leftover bread, but quite a bit of leftover chili. Tomorrow's dinner: Frito Pie!

Chowderific!

Tonight's Menu

• fish chowder
  
• leftover herb bread
  

I've been indulging in a lot of cooking "experiments" lately, and most of them haven't worked out so well, which is why I haven't been posting much. I mean, there's only so much public humiliation I can take. Tonight's chowder, though, was an experiment that worked out wonderfully. Here's how I made it, to the best of my recollection. This was totally one of those "use what you have" type recipes, so if the specific ingredients sound a little weird, that's why.

Okay, first I chopped up some baby carrots and tiny red potatoes and simmered them in some veggie broth just until tender. While that was going, I cut up half a sweet onion and about 5-6 slices of pre-cooked bacon. I tossed the bacon into a big pot over medium high heat, just to crisp it up a bit, then reduced the heat to medium and added 3 Tbs. butter and the onions. I cooked and stirred them until the onions had gone translucent, then I added 3 Tbs. flour and stirred until it turned golden. Then I slowly stirred in some milk (I have no idea how much -- 4 cups, maybe?) and brought that to a gentle boil, stirring all the while so it wouldn't scorch on the bottom. Once it started bubbling, I added two large tilapia fillets which I had cut into bite-sized pieces, plus I drained the potatoes and carrots and added those in as well. I tossed in a bunch of dried thyme and parsley, a little dried basil, some salt and pepper and brought the whole thing back up to a boil. Then I reduced the heat to low and let it simmer about 15-20 minutes, just enough to cook the fish through and meld all the flavors.

The broth thickened a bit while it was cooking, and it was SO yummy and flavorful. I debated whether to add dill, but I really don't like dill with creamy sauces/broth. I'm weird, I know. The thyme was awesome, though.

The herb bread was left over from a few nights ago when I made an (unsuccessful) attempt at beef stew. A little tip from me to you -- don't use crappy beer in your stew. Take it from me, y'all.

Not exactly chili weather, but I made it anyway

Tonight's Menu

• chili con carne
  
• cornbread
  
• green salad
  

Even though it was really warm and humid today, I was in the mood for chili. I basically made this recipe from Martha Stewart, but with the following changes:

• I used dried pasilla chiles because that's what I had
• I used all beef (chuck), no pork
• I used Glen Muir organic fire-roasted crushed tomatoes, just for the heck of it (and to add a little smokiness, which was really nice -- I'd do that again for sure)
• I omitted the vinegar and used a tablespoon of sugar instead
• please note that the 3 tsp of salt called for is a bit much, at least to my palate -- I'd knock that in half if I made this again

Anyway, it was really good except for the extra saltiness.

The cornbread is from an old Better Homes & Gardens recipe that I use all the time.

1 cup flour
1 cup cornmeal
4 Tbs. sugar
1 Tbs. baking powder
1/2 tsp. salt

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F, spray an 8-inch square baking pan with cooking spray, and mix the above ingredients together in a medium bowl.

2 eggs
1 cup milk
1/4 cup cooking oil

Mix above three ingredients together, then add to dry ingredients, mixing just until smooth. Pour batter into prepared pan and bake for 20-25 minutes.

More fun with leeks

Tonight's Menu

• leek and potato soup
  
• beer bread
  

I was in a soup and bread kind of mood tonight. The leek and potato soup was based on this Emeril recipe. I used applewood-smoked bacon, substituted organic vegetable broth for the chicken broth (because DH is allergic to poultry) and dry vermouth for the white wine, shoved the bouquet garni ingredients into a tea ball, used black pepper instead of white, and didn't bother with the chives. But other than that, I followed the recipe exactly! Heh. It was very yummy, and gave me a chance to try out my new immersion blender (a birthday gift from DH).

The beer bread was from this recipe that I found online. I sifted the dry ingredients as recommended and only used 1/4 cup butter. It was really good! The crust was almost more than my crappy old bread knife could handle, though. Time to upgrade to a Wusthof, I guess!

Soupy

Tonight's Menu

• potato soup

Um, yeah. That's all. Just soup. I was going to make bread but we had a busy late afternoon/early evening and it didn't happen.

That's okay. It's not like this meal needed more carbs.

Gravy

Tonight's Menu

• skillet pork chops with mushroom gravy
  
• steamed Texmati rice
  
• caramelized baby carrots
  

This was pure comfort food, y'all.

The chops recipe is one I've used since before DH and I got married. Actually, it was his recipe originally. This time I used bone-in chops. So yummy. I let them simmer while I cooked the sides. When the sides were done, the chops were done.

Rice was steamed in the microwave. I have no instructions for you except to use two parts water to one part rice. Our microwave has a "smart" setting so I use that.

The carrots were also steamed in the microwave (I used fresh baby carrots; I suppose you could use frozen if you had to). Then I melted some butter with some brown sugar (equal amounts of both) in a skillet and tossed in the steamed, drained carrots until they were coated with the caramelly goodness.

Gumbo!

Okay, so this was weird: yesterday at my sucky supermarket I picked up, totally on a WHIM, the makings for seafood gumbo. I didn't want to make it yesterday because we had just had fish the day before, so I decided that tonight would be Gumbo Night. And then this morning, I opened up the paper to find that the food section was doing a HUGE article on guess what? Gumbo! I KNOW! I swear to you all, I was planning this before I ever saw that. I WAS! Shut up!

Anyhoodle, I do not by any means claim that my gumbo is the be all, end all of gumbo recipes. I have no ego invested in this crappe, y'all. I just know mine tastes good, and that's all I care about. So here's how I made it tonight, and keep in mind a lot of my cooking technique has to do with the fact that I have a teeny little stockpot and not a nice big one.

And you know what? I'm not even going to do this as a recipe. Because I didn't really bother to measure anything. Sorry about that. Hopefully if you REALLY want to make it the way I did, you can figure it out from the following.

Okay. So I took half a stick of butter (that would be 1/4 cup) and melted it over medium high heat, then I dumped in half a cup of flour. Which was too much, so I added a little olive oil to loosen it up. I stirred the hell out of it forever until it took on a color somewhere between butterscotch and caramel. I lack confidence in making a dark roux. I'm afraid I'll burn it. So, light-medium roux it was.

Then I added 1 medium chopped onion, two chopped celery sticks, one small chopped green bell pepper, one-half chopped yellow bell pepper, and three large-ish chopped garlic cloves. Stir, stir, stir. Then I dumped in 12 ounces of chopped andouille sausage. Stir, stir, stir. Then I stirred in two cans of vegetable broth, some oregano, some thyme, some freshly ground pepper and two bay leaves. Bring to a gentle boil, then cover and reduce to a simmer for 45 minutes or so. You want the veggies tender. No crisp-tender in gumbo, yo!

About 15 minutes before serving, I stirred in about a cup of sliced okra. I used frozen which I thawed in the microwave before adding to the gumbo. You could use fresh, but you'd want to add it a little earlier in the cooking process.

Five minutes before serving, I stirred in a small can of crab claw meat (you could use lump or jumbo lump but it's WAY more expensive) and a pound of peeled raw shrimp. As soon as the shrimp curls, take it off the heat and remove the bay leaves. You're now ready to serve this puppy up over rice.

It's so damn good, y'all. Seriously. This made a ton so I froze some of it for a day when we're in need of comfort food.

Go forth and gumbo, y'all!

Chili Verde

Tonight's Menu

• chili verde
  
• tortilla chips
  

Here's what I tend to do when I want to cook something, especially something soup/stew-like, that I've never cooked before: I google a gazillion recipes for it, and then I wing it. That's what happened tonight, when I suddenly decided that pork + peppers would be a little slice of heaven on a chilly day.

First I diced up some pork (about 1.5 lbs. boneless loin chops, because that's what I had) and browned it. Then I tossed a chopped onion and about 4 cloves of minced garlic in the pan and sweated them out a bit. Then I dumped in enough vegetable broth (canned) to cover the meat and let it simmer.

While the meat was getting tender, I tossed a bunch of tomatillos, a couple of anaheim peppers, and a poblano pepper with a little EVOO and roasted them in the oven for about 20-25 minutes at 400 degrees F. I seeded the peppers and removed the stems and then dumped the whole shebang into the food processor.

Then I added the tomatillo/pepper puree to the simmering meat/onions/broth, along with some oregano, cilantro, cumin, salt and pepper and let it simmer away until it had thickened up a bit.

Then DH came home and informed me that he does not like verde sauce. Uh, okay. So he had leftover shrimp from God knows how long ago instead. The girl had a peanut butter sandwich because GOD FORBID she should ever eat soup that didn't come out of a can.

The boy and I devoured a couple of bowls each of this stuff (no meat for him, sour cream on top for me). It was absolutely delicious.

Soup's on!

So hey, everyone! Sorry to disappear (again! I know!) on you like that. We've had some crappy weather lately and so I have been busy making soup!

Let's see... last week I made Portuguese Soup, this week I made Loaded Potato Soup, and just tonight I made chili for what I think is the first time ever!

My mom makes an awesome and very Yankee-fied chili that is similar to Cincinnati style but with kidney beans and without spaghetti. I have never tried to make it, though, and DH is allergic to beans. I've used the Wick Fowler's mixes for meat-based chili in the past, but this is the first time I've ever made it from scratch!

Anyhoo, what I did was cut about 2 lbs. of beef (I honestly can't remember what cut I used -- it was a cheap, heavily marbled roast of some sort) into a small dice and brown it in a big pot. Then I tossed in a chopped sweet yellow onion and three big cloves of garlic (minced). Once the meat was brown and the onions had sweated out a bit, I dumped in an assload of chili powder, some cumin, a little oregano and some salt. Then I added a big can of crushed tomatoes and a bottle of beer (Abita Turbodog, yo). I brought it to a boil and then let it simmer, uncovered, for about 2 hours before serving it with cornbread and some shredded cheese and sliced green onions on the side.

It was pretty good but a little too tomatoey and not nearly spicy enough for my taste. If I had it to do over, I'd use a bunch of dried chili peppers or maybe mix in some chipotles in adobo or something. It just wasn't peppery enough, you know? It was tasty, though!

I'm getting a little sick of soup so tomorrow will be something ... not soup-like. Stay tuned!

Portuguese soup

My mom swears she has been making this sausage and cabbage soup (recipe here) for years but I don't remember it at all. The first time I remember eating it was when Malcontent Mama served it to Bookhart and me at her house on a very cold evening last winter. I've made it several times since and it always takes me back to that icy/drizzly evening and all the laughter and alcohol and broken glass. Good times! (Er, you probably had to have been there.)

Anyway, I was in the mood for it tonight so I put a pot on to simmer while the kids were at taekwondo. I leave out the kidney beans because DH is allergic to them, but in my opinion the soup is better with them in. This is a wonderful soup for cold weather -- it really warms you up inside! It's even better the second day, after the flavors have really had a chance to meld.

Potato soup

It's been rainy the past couple of days, and that means my fibromyalgia is in flare (BIG TIME), and that means I want comfort food. This is my favorite potato soup, which I made for dinner tonight. It's very filling and very NOT healthy, so try it at your own risk. You could probably lighten it up a bit with low-fat or fat-free dairy products and turkey bacon, but I haven't tried it that way and don't intend to. It may end up killing me one day, but what a way to go!

Loaded Potato Soup

2 large baking potatoes
1/3 cup butter
half of a sweet yellow onion, chopped
1/3 cup flour
3 1/2 cups milk (okay, so I use 1%)
1/2 cup sour cream
6 slices bacon, cooked and crumbled
3/4 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. freshly ground pepper
1 Tbs. snipped fresh chives or spring onion tops (the green part)

Bake the potatoes for about 1.5 hours at 375 degrees F. Or, you know, however long you usually bake your potatoes. Remove from oven and let cool completely. (I do this earlier in the day and stick them in the fridge after they've cooled.) Once they're cool, peel and cut them into small cubes.

Melt butter in a large pot or Dutch oven. Add chopped onion and saute until the onion releases a bit of fragrance. Stir in flour until smooth. (Yes, you are making a roux. With onions. Just go with it.) Slowly stir in the milk and continue to stir constantly until thickened. Add cubed potatoes and bring to a boil while stirring constantly, then reduce heat and simmer for 10 minutes or so (giving it a stir now and then).

After 10 minutes, add the sour cream, bacon, cheese, salt and pepper and stir until the cheese melts. Ladle into bowls and top with snipped chives or onion tops (you could also add a bit of extra sour cream and bacon crumbles, if you want).

Makes 4-5 servings and the recipe is easily doubled (or halved, if you're cooking for 1 or 2). It doesn't keep well because of all the dairy, so try to eat it up within a day or two. That's never been a problem around here!