I needed to use the rest of my organic russet potatoes purchased while Rachelle visited us. Terry suggested potato soup, so I went searching for a new potato soup recipe, one with fewer calories (for me … Terry needs to put on weight so he can really load it down with cheese and bacon). I found one at SparkPeople, created by their Chef Meg Galvin called her Loaded Potato Soup.
Her prep time of fifteen minutes turned into my prep time of forty-five minutes, but I don’t have the benefit of years of knife skills honed to perfection on the culinary cutting board of her career. I did learn the proper way to cut an onion, thanks to several online knife skills videos.
I got my large saucepan out to heat up and began following her instructions. I did great until I reached the part where I was to add the spices. I had not laid out my non-vegetable ingredients before I started cooking, so I looked up at a partial list of ingredients on the recipe web page (partial because I had scrolled down to read the directions and the first half of the ingredients rolled out of sight off the top of the page). The pepper listed last was cayenne (a quarter teaspoon) which I immediately added to my saucepan. Then I needed to add the thyme, and I had to scroll back up to find out how much. When I found it, I realized the ingredient immediately preceding the thyme was black pepper. So, I had just mistakenly added the cayenne pepper where I should have added a half teaspoon of black pepper. Argh!.
I quickly read further through the directions and realized the cayenne was added, almost like a garnish, after you remove the bay leaf. I shrugged and added the black pepper, thyme and bay leaf, since there was nothing I could do about the cayenne pepper at this point. The rest of the process went without further mishap.
I simmered the soup for more than the suggested thirty minutes (probably more like forty-five minutes). I did not opt to add the corn nor the lettuce. And, rather than getting my blender dirty just to puree the soup, I used a mashed potato masher utensil instead.
I filled two bowls with the soup and crumbled turkey bacon over both of them. I added a handful of colby jack cheese to Terry’s bowl, but left my dairy-free. The soup had a bit of a kick, both from the yellow bell pepper and, I suspect, the too early application of the cayenne. But, both Terry and I cleaned our bowls.
I will probably try this recipe again, now that I am familiar with the process and can refine it for our palettes.
