Thursday, October 21, 2010

Return of the Living Blogger

I’ve been absent for a while, I know. I’m sorry.

I finished a beret.

Laurel-7

It’s Laurel from Jared Flood’s Made in Brooklyn. I love it so much.

I’ve been knitting on other things, just not finishing them. So no other knitting news really.

I did make potato and bacon soup today though. It was super easy, and fairly cheap to boot.

Potato Bacon soup

What you need: Potatoes, onions, garlic, bacon, milk, butter, chicken stock mix.

Boil about 5 large potatoes that have been diced to about a half inch in just enough water to cover, add about 2tbsp chicken stock mix (don’t add salt to the water, the stock mix is salty enough). Fry up about a half pound of bacon to extra crispy (try not to eat it all), set bacon aside. Mince about 4 cloves of garlic and two small onions. Drain off about half the bacon fat, sauté the onions and garlic in the bacon pan. Add about 2 cups milk to the potato/chicken stock mix.

This is where preference comes in, I mashed about a quarter of the potatoes just to thicken up the soup a bit. You could add flour or corn starch, but I opted for mashing.

Chop up the bacon as fine or coarse as you like, add to the soup. Once the onions have become translucent add them to the soup. Bring up to a simmer, adding more milk if it’s too thick. Add about 2tbsp of butter. Continue to simmer until you get the consistency you’d like.

I didn’t really have a recipe when I made this, I just winged it, and I must say it came out really well. It’s such a great base for adding to. Like it spicy? Try adding some chilli powder. Want it cheesey? Add cheese.

As to the cost, well… I bought 10lbs of potatoes (2.99), 2L of milk (3.89), bacon (4.49), 2lbs of onions (1.50), and garlic (0.26), and some things I had in my cupboard, like the chicken stock mix. What I actually used though I’d estimate at:

Potatoes 0.50
Milk 1.00
Bacon 2.25
Onions 0.20
Garlic 0.05
Chicken Stock 0.20
Total 4.20

Break that down into the 7 portions I got out of it, and it means that each bowl of soup costs about $0.60. Insane right? I think I need to make more soup like this.

-Cheers folks.