Potato cheese soup and beer bread

     I realized looking over my blog (it's been going for over a year now!) that the most posts I had last year were in January.  Considering I have at least five recipes to blog about, I think this year perhaps the most blog posts will also be in January.  I guess there are a couple of reasons for this.  1) As I was saying last year, we have five weeks off of work.  This gives one a) A lot of time in which to cook and b) The need to cook at home to save money.  2) I have actually been in a crazy cooking mood lately.  I have cooked a lot more over this Christmas vacation than I ever have before.  I thanked the people who let us stay over at their house by making them a home cooked meal.  We also cooked for Scott's mom and for Christmas itself.  I will cover those recipes in future blog posts.     This week's (and perhaps even month) seems to be cheese.  This week, I plan to make another macaroni and cheese recipe (one I have tried twice before and failed at [more to come on that]), fondue, Frito pie and French onion soup.  This recipe is for a delicious cheesy potato soup that comes to us courtesy of our friend/neighbor/co-worker Marie Kraemer Wegrich.  She first served it to us wolfies (my job is at the Web of Life Field school- WOLF) for a after work staff dinner party.  I loved it so much that I asked for the recipe and finally got the opportunity to make it last night.  It is amazing!  I decided to serve it with beer bread since our friend Rachel Young gave us a beer bread mix.  Usually, I don't like mixes, but this one also came out really well.  Okay, onto the cheesy potato soup:

Potato Cheese soup (thanks to Marie)

Ingredients:

3-4 tbsp. butter
2 cups chopped onion
1 large clove garlic
2 large potatoes
1 large carrot
3 cups water or stock
1 tsp. dill
4 oz. cream cheese
1 1/2 cups milk
1 cup grated cheddar cheese

Procedure:

1) Saute garlic and onion.
2) Add other ingredients in order.  Simmer until veggies soft.
3) Cool. Blend with cream cheese and milk in blender.
4) Heat.  Add cheddar cheese.
5) Salt and Pepper to taste.

Katie's notes:
Although the recipe doesn't say so, I cut up the potatoes, carrots and onions.

     The result?  Delicious!  Can you tell I like this soup?  A couple of other notes: One onion yields about 1 cup and a half.  I didn't bother to peel the potatoes.  I cut them into eighths or so, but I think I should have cut them a little bit smaller.  I used russet potatoes.  The final note?  Having an immersion blender is a blessing here!  I wasn't sure it was going to be able to handle the big chunks of potatoes with peel on but it did it all!  I didn't even bother to cool it down, just added in the milk and cream cheese and blended.  I missed a few of the carrots, but it was kind of a nice surprise to all of a sudden find a carrot in your soup.  A food processor also came in handy for chopping the onions and grating the cheese, but this is all a luxury!
     The beer bread was from Rachel Young (as mentioned above) as a Christmas/Welcome to Bridgewater present for Scott and myself.  Bridgewater, MA is where Scott went to college (the first time around) and so we go there every year after Christmas to visit with his college friends.  We stayed with Steve and Robbin Maloney in East Taunton, MA and had a lovely visit.  I'll say more about that when I talk about the beef stew I made for them.  Anyways, the name of the mix is Tastefully simple Bountiful Beer Bread mix.  All you do is add in beer (or soda), mix in the mixture, put it in a greased 9 x 5 loaf pan and top it with 3 tbsp melted butter (optional) and bake at 375 for about 50 minutes.  Super easy.  I used Trader Joe's version of Negro Modelo.  Delicious!  I don't usually like mixes (why pay the extra money when it is so easy to make things from scratch [for a lot of things] plus they are often filled with preservatives and other chemicals), but this one was light, buttery, crispy crusted, sweet yumminess.  It was actually too good to have with the soup so I ate a lot of it on its own.  Yum!!

Marie's potato cheese soup

Beer bread from a box.  Who knew it could be good?

Deliciousness!  Especially the crust!

A really good mix!

Enjoying cheesy deliciousness!