Potato Cheese Soup and some changes

I know my blog has been on hiatus for a while, there are a couple reasons for this ~ 1. I've been busy with my 3 little boys and a have an amazing husband that works a bazillion hours to maintain a successful  business a.k.a. our gun shop, Arizona Firearms and Pawn ~ 2. I am fairly new to the blogging world. I started this blog a little over a year ago because of my passion for cooking, my intentions were for it to be strictly a cooking blog where I can share all of my recipe's and idea's in the kitchen.  It went good for a while and then it went into a lull, partly because my lack of posts (because I was getting bored with it) and I think partly because I wasn't connecting with my readers.  Sure I would pin a picture of one of my recipe pic's on pinterest and it would get repinned hundreds of times and I would get traffic to my blog that way, but I still wasn't getting any new followers that I truly connected with and felt were my "friends" so to speak. So recently I've done a lot of research and come across so many different, wonderful blogs that have inspired me to do a little something different with mine. I still want to keep the cooking aspect of it by including one of my recipe's in each post but mostly I want it to be about LIFE, my life.  I also want to fancy this sucker out a little bit, but I'm not sure how to do that yet, and that's a whole other story.

So here we go.  As I'm writing this my husband is at work, my 10 yr old Alex is reading (good boy) my 6 yr old Aidan is blasting gangnam style and I'm about to lose my mind, kidding, well maybe halfway, and my 3 yr old Aidan is napping (this is about the only time I can get anything done) and I have a cold, waaahhhh.  This week has been incredibly long, well actually the past couple of months have.  Mostly because of PJ's work schedule, ever since the election people have been buying guns like MAD, afraid they are going to be outlawed I guess??  I mean, the store has always been busy but not to this extent! Now this is great for our business but it keeps PJ away from home a lot more than he or I want.  He also has a gun show this weekend which means that he wont have a day off for two weeks, that mixed with the fact that he doesn't get home from work every evening until 7:30 kinda makes me feel like a single mom sometimes.  Anyway enough with the debbie downer stuff.

Here is a video of Lukey on Christmas morning singing Santa Claus is Coming to Town, this took me about a month to get on video because every time I tried to record him, he refused.  So I had to pretend I was doing things on my phone while encouraging him to sing and it worked!  But that's why half of the picture is counter top :(
 It really is the. cutest. thing. ever.  Hearing him sing it in his sweet little 3yr old voice and the hand gestures!  I could just die.  He is at such a fun stage, constantly asking questions, learning new things everyday and trying SO HARD to be like and do everything his big brothers do. Speaking of the Lukester he should be waking up soon so onto the recipe I go!


I'm going to dedicate this one to my Instagram friend Rebecca, I posted a pic of this amazing soup on IG a while ago and she asked me for the recipe, that was a month ago...oops.  Sorry girl. I hope you enjoy it!


Potato Cheese Soup

Ingredients

4 tablespoons of butter or margarine
1 onion finely chopped
2 medium carrots finely chopped
2 ribs of celery finely chopped
3 cloves of finely chopped garlic
1 tablespoon flat leaf parsley finely chopped
4-5 cups of chicken or veg stock (depending on how thick you want your soup)
1 (12 oz) bottle of light beer (broth can be substituted for this)
1 cup whole milk
1/4 cup all purpose flour
2 cups of freshly grated extra sharp cheddar cheese
salt and fresh ground pepper
4-5 medium russet potatoes peeled and chopped
worcestershire sauce
hot sauce (I prefer red hot but whatever you have on hand will do)
4 green onions chopped to garnish with, optional
6-8 slices of cooked crisped bacon for garnish, optional, I didn't chop mine because my kids like to dip it in and eat it whole
small hollowed out sourdough bread bowls to serve in (optional)


Method

Pre heat a large sauce pan over medium heat, melt the butter or margarine, then add the chopped onion, carrot, celery and garlic.  Saute until the veggies begin to soften, about 4-6 minutes.  Sprinkle the flour into the pan and stir for 2-3 minutes, add salt and pepper to taste.  Slowly whisk in the stock, milk and beer, once combined stir in the potatoes and parsley.  Bring the soup to a boil, reduce the heat to simmer for 20-30 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.  Remove from the heat and use an immersion blender and puree the soup until smooth, if you don't have an immersion blender just add the soup in batches to a regular blender.  Return the soup to low heat and add the cheese a handful at a time,stirring until melted in between each addition. now at the end is when I add the salt, pepper, hot sauce and worcestershire.  I don't put a specific amount for these because its all about your taste preference, especially with the hot sauce and worcestershire.  So just start with a couple dashes of both and go from there

Enjoy!

Yield 6-8 servings