Baked Potato Soup

My husband and I love soup, especially on a cold winter night when the heater on is on the fritz. So tonight, we curled up with steaming bowls of loaded baked potato soup.

3 cups white potatoes. Any waxy potato like Yukon gold or red will work too. I'd steer away from russets, just because they crumble into mush when you boil them. Obviously, if these were REAL loaded baked potatoes, you should ignore that advice.
2 cups chicken broth
2 cup whole milk
1/2 cup white wine
4 strips bacon
three cloves garlic
1/2c cup cheese (I had a mix of cheddar and swiss on hand. )
1/2 cup sour cream
Salt and pepper to taste

You should also add an onion. My last onion has gone all sprouty, so I left it out.

Fry bacon until crispy in your soup pot. Remove from pan and drain. Lightly fry your chopped, white potatoes in the grease. They won't get cooked all the way, but you'll add a little color. If you have an onion, it goes in here. Add the garlic, then add the chicken broth, milk and wine. Bring to a boil, then simmer until potatoes are tender. Melt in the cheese, then use an immersion blender to blend all the potatoes together. The last time I made a potato soup, I didn't do this and my husband got all pouty faced over it. He likes his soup slurpy. You can skip doing this if you prefer a chunkier soup or don't a have an immersion blender. Wisk in the sour cream and add the crumbled bacon. Add salt and pepper and serve. I think green onions or chives on top would be very pretty.

This dish, like so many I make these days, comes from me looking at my kitchen and thinking "What can I make with what I've got?" The potatoes needed to be eaten up before they went sprouty. I always have bacon. The sour cream and cheese were leftover from a Battlestar Frak Party chili Diane brought us on Friday. There was brief discussion of spaghetti tonight, but I don't have all the things I like to have with spaghetti. That's one of the things I like about scratch cooking. You can be endlessly creative with what you have in the pantry.