This soup has been a part of our Christmas tradition for many years.  It's so easy to make and perfect for a Christmas Eve dinner at home because it gets your belly full to sleep and wait on Santa.

Baked Potato Soup
Serves 6 and can easily be halved.
Cook time varies from 20 minutes to 1 hour 20 minutes depending on how the potatoes are prepped.  I prefer baking them but you can also microwave them.

Ingredients

• 4 large baking potatoes
• 1/2 stick of salted butter
• 1 Tablespoon of flour​
• 4 cups of whole milk
• 8 oz. bag of shredded cheddar cheese
• 1 1/2 cups of sour cream
• Salt & Pepper to taste

​Directions

• Bake or microwave potatoes
  • ​To bake, wrap potatoes in foil and bake in 450° oven for 1 hour or until they feel soft when squeezed.
  • To microwave, pierce potatoes with a fork and wrap in plastic wrap.  Microwave for 5 minutes and then turn potatoes and microwave for another 5.  They are done if they are soft when squeezed.
• Once potatoes are cooled, peel and discard peel.  Roughly chop potatoes and set aside.
• In a heavy sauce pan or dutch oven, melt butter over medium high heat,
• Allow butter to just begin to brown before sprinkling flour over the butter.  
• Stir butter and flour mixture and add milk stirring constantly.
• Reduce heat and allow mixture to begin to thicken while stirring gently.  The flour and butter will create the thick base for the soup so be sure to stir well so you don't get lumps.
• Add in potatoes, cheese, sour cream, salt and pepper and gently stir.
• If soup is too thick add a small amount of milk.
• Taste soup and see if you need more salt at this point.

Tips

• Serve soup in a hollowed out bread bowl or roll.
• Set up a topping bar with small bowls of shredded cheese, chopped green onion, sour cream and bacon pieces.

​Love,

A grilled cheese is just a grilled cheese, right? Wrong!
​
I have always taken my grilled cheese making very seriously since it was the very first thing I ever cooked as a kid.  My Aunt Jo Anne taught me years ago to melt the butter in the pan first and then sort of swipe the bread around the pan to get the butter on the bread.  I personally prefer using softened (salted) butter to smear on the bread but there really is no wrong way to begin making a grilled cheese.  However, just in the past year I think I have truly perfected my grilled cheese! 

Here are a few tips to get the grilled cheese of your dreams:

1. Use brioche bread.  This soft, sweet, thick sliced bread is what grilled cheese dreams are made of.  It's very indulgent and costs more than regular sliced bread but is such a treat!
2. Use shredded cheese!  This goes against every grilled cheese I ever made up until about a year ago.  I have always been a Kraft sliced cheese gal (always two slices, never one!).  Sometime back I wanted a grilled cheese and didn't have any sliced so I went for it and used some shredded cheddar we had.  We've become shredded cheese snobs of late so the kind I had on hand was tillamook cheese cheddar blend.  Once I made this grilled cheese I knew it would be hard to ever go back.
3. Make a mess - on purpose.  After buttering your slices of bread and lying in the pan be sure and make a tad bit of a mess when sprinkling the shredded cheese onto the bread.  Why you ask?  When the cheese begins to melt along the outer edges of the bread and then gets all crispy and nice you will see why! I've even gone so far as to sprinkle a slight bit of cheese in the pan before adding the buttered bread right on top.  YUM.

PS: If serving with my tomato basil soup, cut the grilled cheese into slices or squares for dipping!
Love,

Hurricane season is here which means the weather went from 89 a few days ago to 65 today. That is basically winter weather for us!  With the cooler weather comes warmer meals at home!  I love soup weather so much that I've been known to cut the AC down so that it felt more Chili appropriate.  😬😂
Hands down my absolute favorite soup recipe is my tomato basil soup.  It is seriously the easiest thing to make, takes about 5-10 minutes total and tastes like it's from a lovely little bistro!
While this tomato basil soup is great alone, I must insist it be paired with at least 1/2 of the perfect buttery grilled cheese. Honestly it takes longer to make the grilled cheese than the soup but it's all worth it, I promise. 
This soup will keep for several days in the fridge.  I don't recommend freezing, you probably can, but there's a very slim chance any will be leftover.

Tomato Basil Soup 
Recipe serves 4  and can easily be doubled!

Ingredients

• 1 large can of whole tomatoes if you do not have a blender you can use crushed tomatoes (I strongly recommend san marzano style tomatoes)
• 1/4 cup of heavy cream
• 1 heaping Tablespoon of dried basil
• 1/4 teaspoon of kosher salt
• A pinch of crushed red pepper to taste (a little goes a very long way)
• 2 Tablespoons of salted butter (optional)

Directions

• Add first 5 ingredients to blender and blend until smooth. 
  
• Transfer to a small pot on stove and bring to a simmer.
  
• Add butter to melt and continue to stir. The soup should be a shade of orange red.  Taste and see if you want to add more cream or spices etc. 
  
• Serve warm with small cuts of grilled cheese for dipping.

Love,