Kitchen: Potato Leek Cheese Soup

Potatoes, leeks, carrots, celery, bacon, and CHEESE!

Soups are so much easier on the budget right now...back in the day, at least there was "cheap" food.  Even the "cheap" foods today aren't that cheap.  Ok, there is always Ramen noodles...but so high in sodium (salt) and not much food value or flavor.  Tuna is on sale for $1 a can and the cans just keep shrinking in size.  
This soup, is really good for lunch by itself, or with a sandwich...or as part of your evening meal.  Leeks are perfect with potatoes (and btw with chicken as well).  I haven't tried this with purple (aka blue) potatoes, but the Yukon Gold works nicely with this.  (You might even slip in a little white sweet potato in this--they aren't as sweet as regular sweet potatoes or yams)

• 2 TB Olive Oil
• 3 medium sized leeks, carefully washed, and sliced*
• 4-6 carrots, sliced (or small chunks) (I usually use 2 med carrots per person)
• 4 ribs of celery, sliced on an angle, if you like
• 1 TB dried parsley leaves (optional)
• 1/2 tsp celery seed
• 1/2 cup fresh or frozen corn (optional)
• Water (enough to cover the potatoes when you add them)
• Salt (I use Vegesal (blue label)--a celery salt with other dried vegetables) (This amount will depend on taste preference and the amount of potatoes used)
• Potatoes, (I prefer Yukon Gold with the skins on, but they do tend to break down a little) I use 2-3 medium potatoes per person--if I expect to have leftovers--otherwise, 1 1/2 potatoes per person.  You might prefer a "waxier" potato.
• milk or half and half or cream
• thickening agent (like flour or corn starch)
• crumbled cooked bacon (or vegetarian substitute)
• grated medium cheddar cheese 
• Arizona Cheese Curds

Heat the olive oil and add the leeks to a dutch oven or soup pot.  Add the carrots, celery, parsley (you could substitute a little kale), celery seed and corn.  Allow them to cook a bit and mingle their flavors. 
At this point you add the water to cover the vegetables and cook them until they are just starting to become tender.  The potatoes can be left unpeeled (scrubbed well), or peeled.  It doesn't matter if you want large chunks or smaller bits of potato, just try to keep the size fairly uniform.  Once the potatoes have been added to the dutch oven or soup pot, make sure they are covered with water to at least an inch or two above their level.  Cover with lid and test often to see if the potatoes are done.  You are looking for a softened, but still firm, potato.  Add 1-2 cups of milk.  Prepare your thickening agent.  Once the water and milk have returned to a boil add the thickening agent.  Keep stirring until thickened, making sure there are no lumps and it doesn't burn.  Set the bacon bits and cheese out for family members and guests to top the soup themselves.  Salt and pepper to taste.  The cheese curds are great in soups...little globs of partially melted cheese...mmmmm!

CRAFT: "Lady in Hat" Pin

Bits and Scraps become a lovely pin

The thing I love about this home crafted pin is that it took very little time to make and cost next to nothing...I could have used a little more "expensive" technique, but this was just an experiment.   
I am always looking at things around the house to see if they can be repurposed to something else.  If you break this piece down to it's parts, this is what you need:

• A plastic base...by using the side of a pink plastic bottle, I cut out the shape and made good use of the curve already in the plastic.  Why pay for plastic blanks when you can use plastic bottles to make the base for bracelets, pins, hair ornaments, magnets, etc.?

• decorative netting...I had found an old hat at the thrift store that was pretty far gone, but it had this netting, and some great feathers, that I rescued for art projects.

• feathers...again, these were rescued from the old hat, and there were quite a few.

• image of lady in hat...this was the most fun part of the pin.  I had gone to a swap meet and found an old catalog...it wasn't even complete!  It had many interesting (mostly) black and white images; very few in color.  I already knew how to easily "colorize" the images the way I wanted them...all I had to do was to photocopy them on some heavy paper and use watercolor pencils to color them.  I added the circular highlights on my own.  If you are a talented artist, you could draw your own image.  You can also take advantage of the many copyright free image books and discs available, like those from DOVER BOOKS. (check out the free samples subscription on the left hand side of the page!) I buy those from thrift stores and used bookstores as well.  [IMPORTANT COPYRIGHT NOTE:  I did have to pay to do a search at the copyright office to make sure they were copyright free, which they now were. The copyright had expired.  That wasn't exactly cheap...but since they were no longer under copyright protection, I was free to use them as I wished--and there were quite a few.]  After I had colored the lady in the hat with the water color pencils, and used water to enhance the color, I let it dry.  

• paper backing...if I were doing this over, I would use some type of cloth and sew the pin back to the cloth first, before gluing.

• pin back...since I prefer stick pins, I probably would have used a stick pin instead, but as I said, this was just an experiment.  I attached it with a bit of hot glue)

• Elmer's or Aleen's Glue...there are many really nice glues to try...this was just several coats of plain old white glue. 

Using the plastic blank I had cut from the pink plastic bottle, I took the netting and cut a piece that would fit over the blank, and used glue overall.  After that dried, I applied the feathers.  Apply several coats of glue to the colorized image.  Affix the image (after it is dried and trimmed of any excess dried glue) over the feathers.  Glue the paper (or cloth backing) to the back, and hot glue (or sew) the pinback.  So, keep your eyes open...look at those plastic bottles before you toss them!  

KITCHEN: Multi-colored Fries

Multi-Colored Fries

What I like about trying to eat "healthier" is that you can sometimes do the old "bad" habits in a new way.  Ok, so maybe french fries aren't supposed to be included in our new diets, but is there anything we can do to tweak that just a little?  I could have done this in the oven as oven fries...I didn't, but that was an option.  I could have used an egg white wash instead of olive oil and grapeseed oil, that was another option.  I wanted real french fries...so I made them with the oil and fried them in a deep skillet.  The only change I wanted to see was the colorfulness of the fries.  I used 

• Yukon Gold, for a buttery flavor
• Sweet Potato, for a lightly sweet flavor
• Blue (or purple) Potatoes, for a little more earthy flavor

The mix of the three types worked pretty well.  And I could have saved calories by using the oven fries option.  When switching a family member that is resisting the changes...you make them little by little...nothing too drastic.  We had already tried the blue potatoes, so that wasn't new, but using the sweet potato was different for us.  It turned out alright...everyone liked them.  I am liking the mix of the colors even more.  I did fry each type of potato separately though, since they have varying levels of sugars in them, I wanted to make sure some wouldn't burn while others were left undone.  I also use the process of frying the potatoes until they are transparent and have developed a "skin" from cooking, but they are not browned.  Remove them from the heat, cooling them on paper towel, and then re-frying them until they turn nice and brown.  This is supposed to help them get a good crisp, so they don't go limp.  Apparently, I did not re-fry them long enough, some of them did go a bit limp, but they tasted so good...who cares!  It has been a LONG time since I made regular french fries.  It's important to eat many "colors" as that is where the antioxidants seem to be. 
In a past blog I wrote about using tomato paste in a tube, (see Nov. 13, 2011), now there are suggestions that we switch out the use of tomato ketchup (catsup) in preference to the tomato paste in a tube.  While I could probably make the switch on a hamburger, I think I'll stick with the regular ketchup on fries for right now. 

also check out these links: Sweet potato vs. Yam

                                    : What George Washington Carver Wrote about Sweet Potato