Potato Leek Soup And Go Mighty Goals

My cooking soup obsession continues.

This time as promised, my version of the Potato Leek Soup Vanessa posted about over at A Fanciful Twist.

It is my version because although my soup was inspired by hers, I sort of did a few things differently. First off, I was pretty lazy and wanted to make everything in one pan instead of two, so out came my trusty dutch oven. (Also, to be honest, the kitchen was already pretty messy so I wanted to add to the mess as little as possible).

My version also differs in that it has bacon! Why not add bacon I say?

I fried up some bacon first so that I would have the bacon grease to cook everything in, and reserved the bacon itself to add at the end.

I chopped up some leeks.

 I had never cooked leeks before, look how big they are!

Then I cooked them down in the bacon grease (and a little olive oil) along with some garlic, salt, and pepper.

In go the potatoes!

After those cooked a bit (I think I also added some butter and more salt and pepper during this part) I covered everything with chicken broth (and a little water because I didn't have quite enough chicken broth).

When I buy chicken broth at the store I like to get this kind if I can because it is from my home state (Oregon represent!).

I then cooked everything with the lid on until the potatoes were nice and soft. As you may be able to tell I was pretty lax on the times, I just sort of cooked everything until I thought it was ready.

I didn't use evaporated milk, I just added some heavy cream to my taste after everything was cooked. I thought about using my lovely immersion blender (see previous post), but in the end I went with Vanessa on this and just sort of mashed everything up with a potato masher so it was still a little chunky.

Then back in went the bacon and some Parmesan for good measure. And voila! Soup!

It was pretty tasty if I do say so myself. Thanks for the inspiration Miss V!

I also wanted to mention that I have set a new goal over on Go Mighty. I have always wanted to cook my way through an entire cook book, but I really don't like sea food at all (neither does Mister B) so inevitably there would always be things I really wouldn't want to make. 

To that end I have decided to cook my way through a bread book! I have almost never met a bread I didn't like, so I think this is going to work out well. This is the book I chose because I already had it, but had never made anything from it before.

And this is the first recipe I made!

It turned out quite well. I had bread for tea and a loaf to freeze for later.

I will be hopefully be posting about the breads I make here, but you can also follow this goal over at Go Mighty. I think it is going to be fun!

And so I leave you with this morning's delicious breakfast sandwich.