Potato Soup And An Icy Winter Day

Miserable icy day here. Snow day yesterday - no school.  Ice day today -two hour delay for school.  When will they ever find time to learn? Argh.

The Other Mother bravely and foolishly set out for work this morning after the boys left for the bus stop. She slid down the driveway - wheels locked and not turning the ENTIRE  way down the drive. Holy Mother of God scary.  She then went to the town landfill ("The Dump" to us locals) to fill several empty 5 gallon buckets with salted-sand....When she returned, she carried the first bucket up the hill and began chopping inch thick ice at the top.  A few minutes later I looked out the front window and noticed the van had slid across our downhill parking lot at the base of the driveway and was heading for the street.  She repositioned the van in the second, slightly flatter parking lot on the other side of the driveway and continued chopping and shoveling ice for several hours. She wound up taking  the entire day from work to chop the driveway clear of ice.  She said she had to. If we had ANY hope of driving up or down the driveway until April, that is. 

Florida is looking good right about now.

You probably know by now that Deb at Smitten Kitchen speaks my love language: FOOD. Not just "fill-your-rumbling-empty-belly" kinda food; but "oh-my-ever-lovin'-god-this-is-so-good" food that leaves you craving more and daydreaming about her recipes. Really. Looking at her blog you'll see that she could cook up some cardboard and packing tape and it would look simply amazing and your taste buds would be screaming to try it. Really. Her food is just that good.

Smitten Kitchen might not change your life but at the very least it will surely change the way you look at food. I felt that way when I saw her recipe today for baked potato soup. Maybe it was the icy weather, maybe it was her delicious looking photos. Whatever. I HAD to make her soup NOW.

My own "lighter" variation of Potato Soup: Lighter is just a fancy way of saying I didn't have onions, leeks, sour cream or cream. Certainly, if you have cream or sour cream you can remove a cup or two of soup, add the cream or sour cream and run this through a blender til smooth then stir it back into the soup to make a creamy and thicker potato soup....but sadly, this is all I had on hand and I NEEDED (at a molecular level) to make her soup immediately.

ICE STORM POTATO SOUP
6 medium potatoes, peeled, diced
1 can chicken broth
3 cans water
1 can of milk (reserve until the end of the recipe)
salt and pepper
pinch of crushed thyme
4 bay leaves
2 fist fulls of baby spinach, rinsed
I whole head of garlic top sliced off 
few cloves of garlic roughly chopped
Simmer until the potatoes soften and the windows steam
Remove head of garlic and bay leaves
Add one can of milk. Stir.
Turn off stove.
Stir in Baby spinach leaves until wilted and bright green
Take 2 or 3 cups soup, puree in the blender til smooth and pour back into soup. Stir.
Serve with a crusty peasant bread, sliced fruit and cheese and a nice red wine.
MMMMMMmmmmmmm.

PS. The Other Mother thought it was a bit peppery - and I thought it was a little too salty...but I think we were both confused as it was probably a little too garlicky.  Next time I would omit the extra garlic (roughly chopped cloves in the broth) and would just simmer the whole head....and add some cream. Yeah. Definitely some cream.