Creamy Potato Soup

Last night we scheduled a play date for Bear with our friend's new golden doodle puppy Leo.  Our after work routine normally has us hitting the gym after work and eating a late supper of whatever we can scrounge up in the fridge.  But since we had the play date, I had some time to actually cook dinner.  Brian suggested soup since the winter weather I have been wishing for is back right now :)  Yay!  So I looked up some potato soup recipes and adapted one to use ingredients I had on hand.  Suprisingly it turned out well and was pretty quick to make!

Ingredients:

2 Tbl butter
2 Tbl onion flakes
1 Tbl minced garlic
5 medium potatoes
2 cups chicken broth
1/4 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp ground black pepper
2 cups milk (I subbed 1 cup fat free half & half & one cup milk)
6 oz cheese
2 cups cubed ham
2 stalks of celery chopped
salt & pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Melt the butter and saute onion flakes, celery, and garlic.  Add the potatoes, chicken broth, thyme, and pepper.  Bring this mixture to a boil and reduce heat to low and simmer for 20 minutes.

2.Transfer half of the potato soup mixture to a blender and process until smooth.  Transfer back to the stock pot and stir in milk, half & half, cheese, ham, and salt & pepper.

3. Continue to cook until heated through.  Serve with a dollup of sour cream (if you have it) and garnish with shredded cheese.

And the good news is I made the soup, ate the soup, and cleaned up in an hour before our friends got there!  The dogs had a great time rough housing together!  All my pictures are a blur because these two pups wouldn't stop wrestling.

teaching Leo to play tug a war