two soups

I love making soups in the fall/winter and mostly I make them up as a I along. This has made me rather handy at making variations of chicken rice, chicken pasta, and taco soups. At the end of last Winter, Jon told me he was tired of them so this Fall I decided to try my hand at making some new kinds of soup. The two I’ve made so far have been magnificent, if I do say so myself. :o)

[Edit: I just got off the phone with Jon and when I asked him what kind of soup I should make try out in a few weeks he asked me, “What’s the deal with you and soups?” So clearly, he’s into them too…]

I know I’ve said it before, but I’m not great at following recipes and since moving here I hate having to shop at more than two stores when I’m gathering ingredients so after scanning a ton of recipes for corn chowder and crockpot potato soups, here is what I came up with:

Crockpot Potato Soup
Cook in a crock pot for 6 hours on high:
a bunch of chopped up potatoes (amount and type is up to you, I used maybe 12 or so baby pink potatoes)
1 box of chicken stock
half a white onion, chopped up thin
2 cloves of garlic, minced
4 slices of cooked bacon, chopped up
thinly sliced celery and carrots to taste
season with pepper and parsley
after about 6 hour or so, mash up the potato chunks with a fork
to thicken, add instant potato flakes (to taste) stir and let cook for 10-15 minutes

Corn Chowder
Sautee half a white onion in about a ¼ cup of butter
add and then boil:
4-5 cubed medium potatoes (really, add as much or as little as you’d like)
2 cans of creamed corn
1 can of chicken broth
stir occasionally, and when the potatoes are soft add a small carton (like the size of the milk cartons you get in school lunches) of light cream (milk or heavy cream or sour cream would work too) ,
a can of drained regular corn (for texture)
season with pepper, garlic salt and parsley

I think you could add bacon or ham to it for a different twist, or some cheddar cheese. Next time I may play around with the spices. I was thinking it might be fun to make it more Southwestern and add some cumin, chili powder, Tabasco sauce and maybe some peppers…