Crock Pot Bake Potato Soup
 

photo courtesy of Food Network

Ingredients:

5 lbs potatoes, peeled and diced in 1 to 2-inch chunks
1 teeny onion, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon seasoned salt
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

1/2 teaspoon red pepper (we used cayenne, I think thats the same. ha)
2 quarts chicken broth
2 (8-ounce) packages cream cheese, to add at the end (we used the 1/3 less fat, I wasnt sure how the fat free would melt)
--crumbled bacon and cheddar cheese and green onion or chives as garnish (optional)

Directions:

Use a 6 quart or larger slow cooker. Peel and dice the potatoes, and put them into the stoneware. Add onion and garlic. Sprinkle in the seasonings, and pour in the broth. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, or on high for 4. The potatoes should be fork-tender. You can use a potato masher to mash the potatoes in the soup, or a hand-held immersible blender. I suppose you can also leave the potatoes in chunks, if you really wanted, but I wanted a smooth soup.

After smashing the potatoes, crumble in both packages of cream cheese, and put the lid back on. Cook on high for about 30 minutes, or until the cream cheese is completely dissolved. Stir a few times during the 30 minutes.

Garnish with crumbled bacon, cheddar cheese, and green onion or chives.

I cannot wait to make this:

Rigatoni with White Wine Tomato Sauce

Click on the link... it's the recipe for the Rigatoni w/ white wine tomato sauce. Kendra, whose blog it is, has some GREAT recipes on there! Check it out!

Cheesy Corn Chowder

photo courtesy of Allrecipes

I am SO looking forward to trying this recipe tonight!!!

Ingredients:

1/4 cup butter, melted

1/4 cup chopped onion

1/4 cup all-purpose flour

4 cups milk

2 (15 ounce) cans creamed corn

1 1/2 cups shredded American cheese

1 teaspoon salt

1/4 teaspoon white pepper

*I am also going to add about 4 or 5 cut up potato's and a diced red pepper. I have heard that it is really good with potato's added, but you can obviously do it without the potato's as well.

Directions:

Using a saute pan over medium heat, saute onion (and pepper if you want that) in butter until tender. Add flour and stir, it will form a paste like consistency. Add milk and stir until thickened. Add corn, cheese and season with salt and pepper (add cut up potatoes as well if you want them). Heat through, until the cheese melts and then serve hot.

*You will probably have to let the chowder cook for awhile so that the potatoes can cook - no longer than an hour though*


Serve with cornbread or in our case, pretzel bread since we don't have/can't make corn bread!

Fried Corn

photo courtesy of Food Network

Ingredients:

4 tablespoons butter
1 (16-ounce) bag frozen corn, defrosted
3 tablespoons white sugar or honey
1/3 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon black pepper

Salt

Directions:

In a large skillet over medium-high heat, melt 4 tablespoons butter. When butter is foamy add the corn stirring to coat with the butter. Cook stirring frequently for 1 minute. Add sugar or honey and cook for 2 minutes more. Increase heat to high and add heavy cream-continue to stir so corn won't stick to pan. Add salt and pepper. Cook corn until most all of the cream has absorbed about 5 minutes more. Remove and serve hot.

Whew, life can continue to go on because... I found a recipe for biscuits in a skillet! One of my husbands favorite things to eat is biscuits. That boy can down a whole pan of Sister Schubert's rolls in like 5 minutes. No joke. So, when we realized upon moving to Germany we would have no oven... a few tears were shed at the thought of no homemade biscuits, cookies, or my personal favorite, brownies! However, this morning I stumbled across a Paula Deen recipe for biscuits in a skillet! Wahooo!!!

Don't worry, I'll be nice and share the recipe with you :-)

 Skillet Biscuits

photo courtesy of Food Network

Ingredients:

2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon sugar
1 tablespoon baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
8 tablespoons butter, cubed
3/4 cup milk

Directions:

In a large bowl combine flour, sugar, baking powder and salt together. Cut butter into mixture until it begins to look like cornmeal.  Make a well with flour mixture and slowly add milk into the middle. Knead dough with your fingers and add milk when necessary. Roll out dough onto a lightly floured surface and roll out to desired thickness. Cut with small biscuit cutter.  Butter bottom of skillet and place biscuits in pan. Bake for 12 minutes or until golden brown.