mealtime madness monday

I've been reading and hearing a lot lately about people who don't/can't cook. christy and i both can, but we admit that we have some "go-to" dishes that fit any occasion/time constraint (like tacos) and only very rarely have to resort to frozen pizza or cereal (although our kids like those days, too). We can also follow recipes, which I just found out not everyone can do successfully.

However, one thing I never make is homemade soup. Maybe it's because my mom makes a delicious chicken noodle and my mother-in-law makes a delicious vegetable beef with dumpling - neither uses an actual recipe and they'd be hard for me to replicate. So, I've decided it's high time I learn. Wanna' learn with me? One more thing - some of you might have turkey leftovers, but for my family, I brought ham. So this is the fabulous recipe I found to finish using it up:

Delicious Ham and Potato Soup (my thanks to Ellie11 at allrecipes.com for sharing this and for suggesting to pair it with a nice Chardonnay)

3 1/2 cups peeled and diced potatoes (although I'll use scrubbed baby reds instead)

1/3 cup diced celery (christy hates celery and would probably skip this)

1/3 cup finely chopped onion (erica hates onions and would probably skip this)

3/4 cup diced cooked ham

3 1/4 cups water  

2 tablespoons chicken bouillon granules

1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste

1 teaspoon ground white or black pepper, or to taste

5 tablespoons butter

5 tablespoons all-purpose flour

2 cups milk

1. Combine the potatoes, celery, onion, ham and water in a stockpot/Dutch oven (i.e. big pot). Bring to a boil, then cook over medium heat until potatoes are tender, about 10 to 15 minutes. Stir in the chicken bouillon, salt and pepper.

2. In a separate saucepan, melt butter over medium-low heat. Whisk in flour with a fork, and cook, stirring constantly until thick, about 1 minute. Slowly stir in milk as not to allow lumps to form until all of the milk has been added. Continue stirring over medium-low heat until thick, 4 to 5 minutes.

3. Stir the milk mixture into the stockpot, and cook soup until heated through. Enjoy!!

Oh, and I'm teaching a cooking class tonight for my preschoolers and their parents. It's veggie pizza, so if you feel like that for supper tonight instead of soup (or if you're a vegetarian, since my meals typically include meat), click here and have fun making it with your kids, too (sorry, couldn't find a link to an all-veggie one - we're using broccoli, carrots, and tomato chunks in place of the pepperoni)!