Cream Cheese Potato Soup

You guys, I am so excited to share this recipe with you! I know that it's the middle of summer and that soup is the last thing that most people want to eat, but most people are not me, and I love soup year-round. I love seasonal eating, I really do, but I just cannot resist a good bowl of soup at any time during the year, even if it's 90 degrees outside.

This is the best potato soup I have ever had, and that includes my grandma's recipe. It's so creamy and velvety and has such wonderful flavor. You could definitely top the soup with shredded cheese and bacon, but I made grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon and tomato to eat with it instead. Joe and I both loved it, but despite how strong our love was, Andrew's was stronger. He could not get enough of this soup, and I hope he enjoys the leftovers for lunch at daycare today!

Cream Cheese Potato Soup
Source: adapted from Recipezaar

2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup onion, minced
2 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 teaspoon seasoning salt
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 bay leaf
4 cups chicken broth
4 cups potatoes, peeled and cubed
1 8-ounce package cream cheese, cut into chunks

1. Heat butter in a dutch oven over medium heat. Add onion and saute until onion becomes translucent. Add garlic and saute 1 minute. Season with seasoning salt and pepper.

2. Add broth, potatoes, and bay leaf and boil until potatoes are tender. Discard bay leaf and smash a few of the potatoes to release their starch for thickening.

3. Reduce to low heat and add cream cheese. Heat, stirring frequently, until cheese melts.

Weekly Meal Planning

I mentioned in one of my posts last week that I'm trying to do more consistent meal planning. I've always been good at going through cookbooks and writing down meals I want to make, and then referring to that list when I'm not sure what to have for dinner, but it isn't something I do on a regular basis -- until recently, that is. And only a couple of weeks in, I'm quickly discovering that meal planning is even more cost-effective and convenient than I thought it would be. Plus, it suits the OCD part of my personality very, very well.

I have to thank Jessie for her awesome Monday Meal Planning posts that never fail to inspire me. I also have to thank Lisa, who inspired me to go one step further and assign weekly "theme nights" for dinner. This idea fits our growing family very well, and it helps me focus when I'm going through my massive binders and multitudes of cookbooks trying to decide on something for dinner.

So without further ado, I present to you my inaugural Weekly Meal Plan -- which, I just noticed, is quite pig-heavy this week. Guess what the pregnant lady is craving! At this rate the baby will come out oinking.

Monday -- Soup or Salad: Cream cheese potato soup, grilled cheese sandwiches with bacon and tomato

Tuesday -- Pasta: Springy shells, breadsticks, salad

Wednesday -- Grilling: Grilled pizzas with hot sausage, peppers and onions, and oregano ricotta (except probably without the oregano, since the rabbits have eaten all of mine)

Thursday -- Quick and Easy: Spring chicken roll-ups, baked potatoes

Friday -- Burgers and Fries: Jerk pork cheeseburgers with green apple slaw, fries

Saturday -- Regional or International: Probably nothing. We're attending Joe's family's annual Fourth of July cookout earlier in the day and will most likely stuff ourselves beyond belief.

Sunday -- Comfort Food: Pork chops with roasted garlic cream sauce, roasted potatoes, steamed broccoli

Coca-Cola-Glazed Baby Back Ribs

One of the last cookbooks I bought for myself before my self-imposed Cookbook Embargo was Bon Appetit, Ya'll: Recipes and Stories from Three Generations of Southern Cooking. The author, Virginia Willis, was raised in the South but attended culinary school in France, so she has a unique point-of-view. This recipe for ribs is the first recipe I've made from the cookbook, but just looking through it I can tell I'm going to be using it frequently!

Joe and I are very much traditionalists when it comes to ribs, so this recipe was a departure for us. We both really, really enjoyed the end result. The sauce was tangy and sweet, with just the right amount of heat, and the oven-baked ribs stayed nice and tender. These ribs could easily be adapted for the grill, making them perfect for a Fourth of July cookout.

Coca-Cola-Glazed Baby Back Ribs
Source: adapted from Bon Appetit Ya'll: Recipes and Stories from Three Generations of Southern Cooking by Virginia Willis; recipe also featured on her blog

1 cup Coca-Cola Classic

1/4 cup apple cider vinegar

1 1/2 cups firmly packed light brown sugar

1 teaspoon cayenne pepper

1 rack baby back ribs

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

1. To make the glaze, in a small saucepan, bring the Coca-Cola, vinegar, brown sugar, and pepper to a boil over high heat; reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer until syrupy, about 10 minutes. Decrease the heat to low and keep the sauce warm while the ribs cook.

2. Preheat the oven to 325 degrees. Liberally season both sides of the ribs with salt and pepper. Place the ribs on a broiler pan and bake for 30 minutes, glazing the ribs occasionally with the Coca-Cola mixture. Turn the ribs over and continue to cook for an additional 30 minutes, glazing occasionally, or until the ribs are tender and the meat is starting to pull away from the bone.

3. When the ribs are cooked through, set the oven to broil. Liberally spoon half of the remaining glaze over the ribs and broil until glazed a deep mahogany brown, 5 to 7 minutes. Turn over; repeat with the remaining glaze, an additional 5 to 7 minutes. Serve immediately.

Grandma's Scalloped Potatoes

What I'm about to say needs to come with a disclaimer: I have never tried another recipe for traditional scalloped potatoes, so this is completely my own opinion, but I truly believe that my grandma's scalloped potato recipe is the best in the entire world. Whenever I taste them, I'm automatically transported back to my childhood, when she used to serve them with homemade white bread and thick pork chops, dredged in flour and fried. To round out the meal, we'd always drink cans of caffeine-free Coke, and for dessert: canteloupe fresh from the garden, dripping with juice. Food can be a really powerful thing, with its ability to transport you to another time and place.

My grandma lives in a retirement community now, in a tiny apartment with only a stovetop and no oven, so she can't make her scalloped potatoes anymore. When she moved there, she passed along to my mom the special casserole dish she always made them in, and when my mom died the casserole dish passed on to me. I've never used that dish for anything other than Grandma's potatoes.

There's nothing really special about this recipe or its ingredients; it's straight-forward and simple and just very homey. But because of the memories it evokes, to me it's one of the best-tasting things in the world.

Grandma's Scalloped Potatoes
Source: Grandma P.

3 pounds potatoes, peeled and thinly sliced
1 medium onion, thinly sliced
1/4 cup flour
Salt and pepper
Butter
2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese
Milk (estimate it: you want enough to entirely cover the potatoes)

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a small bowl, combine flour, salt and pepper. Heat milk over low heat in a small saucepan.

2. Butter a casserole dish. Layer a third of the potatoes in the bottom. Top with half of the sliced onion. Sprinkle half of the flour mixture over the onions and dot with butter. Top with 1/2 cup cheddar cheese. Add another layer of potatoes, the rest of the onion, the rest of the flour mixture, dotted with butter, and another 1/2 cup of cheese. Top with remaining potatoes and the remaining cup of cheese.

3. Pour milk over potatoes. Cover with foil and bake 30 minutes. Uncover and bake for 1 hour, or until potatoes are fork-tender.

Texas BBQ Chicken Quesadillas

I've had my eye on these quesadillas for quite a while now, and I finally put them on the menu last week. Before this pregnancy, I was indifferent to BBQ sauce. I didn't dislike it, it's just not something I would have chosen to eat. Now, though? Now I can't get enough of the stuff. So these quesadillas did a good job of fulfilling my craving, and on top of that they were delicious! I loved the sweetness of the onions in the filling. This Mexican sour cream rice is the perfect accompaniment. I'll definitely make these quesadillas again. The recipe as I've listed it below makes 2 servings.

Texas BBQ Chicken Quesadillas
Source: seen on A Taste of Home Cooking, adapted from Jenn and Food, Perfect Together

2 tablespoons vegetable oil

1 vidalia onion, sliced

Salt and pepper to taste
1 tablespoon honey

1 large chicken breast, finely diced

1/2 teaspoon Montreal steak seasoning

1/4 to 1/2 cup BBQ sauce (I used Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Chipotle, which worked great)

1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese

4 10-inch flour tortillas

1. Heat one tablespoon of the oil in a pan over medium high heat. Add the onions, season with salt and pepper, and cook until they begin to carmelize. Mix in the honey and stir until it is golden brown. Remove and set aside.

2. Place the remaining oil in the pan and add the chicken. Season chicken with steak seasoning and cook through over medium high heat. Stir in the BBQ sauce to evenly coat the chicken.

3. Place the chicken, onions and cheese onto a tortilla, top with the other tortilla and cook in a quesadilla maker or skillet about 5 minutes, or until tortillas are golden brown.