One Potato, Two Potato, Three Potato, Soup!

That's right! We (by we I mean Dustin) made soup today! I cooked two meals today! That's an accomplishment, granted I currently am not working and have class one day a week. For lunch I made some Chinese instant noodles that were spicy and shrimp flavored; I've been a little burned on these (plain), since I've been burned out on Ramen. I went grocery shopping today and saw frozen precooked shrimp on sale at Meijer for $2.99 for 12 oz, which is the least expensive I've seen shrimp in the store. I bought a bag and some broccoli too. I threw 4 pieces of shrimp and some chopped up broccoli in the pot together with the noodles and made an awesome lunch. There's multiple ways to make noodles taste better, just sometimes if you want ingredients like shrimp it can be expensive. Adding egg and lettuce adds to it too, but you gotta cook it right. I'm really picky about my noodles; they've gotta have the right texture, the right ratio of soup to noodles, the soup can't be too watery tasting, etc.

When he got home from school, Dustin suggested making soup for dinner. He poked around on AllRecipes.com and listed off a few that sounded good. The recipe I chose was ham and potato. It was really low maintenance (aside from dicing vegetables) and delicious! I had to go to the grocery for a second time, granted Dustin was driving and we went to Kroger which is closer than Meijer. I've come to realize, I nine times out of ten lack the desire to be domestic. I'm more than happy to let Dustin do the cooking. I'll pick up on the cleaning; I'm picky being the child of a mother obsessed with cleanliness and neatness. Posting the fabulous potato soup recipe here, which by the way, it looks exactly like the picture and again, tastes as good! The recipe says it serves 8, but I think it's more like 3-4.

Delicious Ham and Potato Soup

Prep Time: 20 Minutes Cook Time: 25 Minutes

Ready In: 45 Minutes Servings: 8

"This is a delicious recipe for ham and potato soup that a friend gave to me. It is very easy and the great thing about it is that you can add additional ingredients, more ham, potatoes, etc and it still turns out great."

Ingredients:

3 1/2 cups peeled and diced potatoes 1/3 cup diced celery 1/3 cup finely chopped onion 3/4 cup diced cooked ham 3 1/4 cups water 2 tablespoons chicken bouillon granules

1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste 1 teaspoon ground white or black pepper, or to taste 5 tablespoons butter 5 tablespoons all-purpose flour 2 cups milk

Directions:

1.	Combine the potatoes, celery, onion, ham and water in a stockpot. Bring to a boil, then cook over medium heat until potatoes are tender, about 10 to 15 minutes. Stir in the chicken bouillon, salt and pepper.
2.	In a separate saucepan, melt butter over medium-low heat. Whisk in flour with a fork, and cook, stirring constantly until thick, about 1 minute. Slowly stir in milk as not to allow lumps to form until all of the milk has been added. Continue stirring over medium-low heat until thick, 4 to 5 minutes.
3.	Stir the milk mixture into the stockpot, and cook soup until heated through. Serve