Something Warm and Cold-Weather Ish

  So, if you don't live in Texas, you may not know that the weather is unusually cold and wet.  Today is the second time this winter that I've seen snow - which doesn't come often to this small town.  Sometimes, when it's cold and wet, you don't want to cook, or leave home.  But when your dear husband is stuck at work and wants something to eat, what do you do?  I asked Dear Hubby what he wanted for dinner, to which he responded, "Something warm and cold-weather ish."  My mind begins to race, trying to think of the perfect something to make.  Then it hits me.  Potato soup.  TA-DA!!

  I was inspired by a Pampered Chef recipe: Loaded Baked Potato Chowder.  Sounds amazing, no?  Obviously, there were some changes to make it vegan.  First - no butter.  It's not needed.  Even a vegan sub.  I suppose it could make it richer, but I don't think it's necessary.  Second, use your favorite plant milk in-place of the dairy milk.  I used almond milk.  Make sure you have regular, unsweetened milk.... I can see the recipe going bad fast with vanilla flavored milk.  bleh.....  Thirdly, use vegan cream cheese sub.  I used Tofuttie garlic and herb.  Very yummy.  The bacon and cheese are totally optional to this recipe.  I can see that they add to it, but no need to add them if you don't want to.  Add all the veggies you like.  I just put sliced green onion in mine.  But you could do mushrooms, corn (would make it a corn chowder though, instead of potato soup.  Which is still good), spinach, onion, carrots - the list goes on and on.  And now, time for a picture.

 

  Okay, now to make the soup.  I used all my nifty Pampered Chef tools, but you could easily do this on the stove with fantastic results... it just would take longer.

  So, 3 large potatoes, sliced into quarters.  Put the potatoes and milk in your Deep Covered Baker (DCB) and microwave for 13 minutes.  The recipe on the PC website says to move the potatoes around a bit in the cooking time.  I didn't bother with that and it came out fine.  After the potatoes cook, remove the DCB from  the microwave and mash the potatoes with either the Mix n' Chop or Mix n' Chunk (pictured).  This takes, literally, all of 2 minutes - if that long!  Love these tools :)

 

While the potatoes were in the microwave, I cooked my bacon and green onions.

 

 

I also mixed the milk and cream cheese in the Manual Food Processor.

  Once the potatoes are out of the microwave, you add your milk / cream cheese mix.  This looks super wet, but trust me, it thickens up pretty quick.  Just stir it all up a bit.  The recipe says to microwave again, but my potatoes were still hot enough to warm the milk up, so I didn't bother.  I also added my bacon and green onions here.

I obviously got some soup on my camera....

  Stir up all the goodness, and serve.  This soup will go fast.  Hope you made enough.  But even if you didn't, it's so quick to make, you could easily whip up more :)  Enjoy!!

  If you have any questions about the Pampered Chef products I've shown here, feel free to email me :)