Slow Cooker Potato Soup

Today I'm trying a recipe that a friend of mine put on her Facebook page, or maybe it was Twitter... it's a lot of prep, so next time I think I'll do that part the night before. However, the smell is unbelievable. Lots of people reviewed this as being delicious so we're looking forward to dinner!!

From the web:

Slow Cooker Potato Soup

Prep Time 20 Minutes (or longer if you're a slow potato peeler like me)
Cook Time 8 Hours-10 Hours on Low

Recipe Description

This is a souped up (ha!) version of a slow cooker potato soup recipe that I had. I felt like it could use a bit more lovin’ – so I added more to it! It’s a fave in our house (and friends LOVE it too!) Serve it with some of Pioneer Woman’s The Bread (on her site) – and for an added bonus, sprinkle a bit of parmesan on top of the bread before baking and it’s DIVINE with the soup!

Ingredients

8 cups Diced Potatoes (peeled) I bought a 5 lb bag of yukon gold and used about 80% of the bag
½ cups Diced Carrots
½ cups Diced Celery
3 cans Chicken Broth, 14 1/2 Oz Each
1 can Cream Of Chicken Soup (10 Oz. Can)
1 Tablespoon Parsley
2 teaspoons Salt
1 teaspoon Pepper
1 clove Garlic, Minced
½ pounds Bacon, cooked and crumbled
5 Tablespoons Flour
1 package Cream Cheese (8 Oz. Package)

Preparation Instructions

In a large slow cooker/crock pot, combine all above ingredients, minus the flour and cream cheese. Salt and pepper to taste. (You can opt to add the bacon at the end as a “garnish”, but I always just throw it in at the beginning.)

Cook on low for 8-10 hours, or until potatoes are done.About an hour before you serve the soup, add the cream cheese. Stir until blended. (The cream cheese adds a whole ‘nother dimension to this soup…so wonderful!)We always like our soup thick, so you can scoop out about a cup or two of the soup into a separate bowl. Add the flour, whisking constantly to avoid any lumps. Then as you are stirring the soup, add flour/soup mixture back into the slow cooker. Replace lid and allow the soup to cook for another 20-30 minutes (or until you’re ready to serve).

You can repeat the last step of the flour/soup if needed to get the thickness desired.

Verdict:

This was DELICIOUS! It made a lot and we loved the way that it made the house smell all day long. Next time I'd add a little less pepper and then add it when served as needed. The only thing that this was missing was a blizzard outside (and I'm not sad about that!). It's the perfect winter soup. I highly recommend making this!!

Bacon-Wrapped Apple BBQ Chicken

This Christmas I got a new, and much bigger crockpot so I'm excited to try some new recipes and post about them! Last year I started blogging about what I was cooking and then got pregnant and NOTHING seemed appealing so I certainly didn't want to write about food (I couldn't even stand the smell of most food!) I recently came across a website through Facebook called The Crockin' Girls or www.crockingirls.com and this came from there. I made it with a few modifications:

1. no lemon juice (I have a severe lemon allergy, I hope excluding this doesn't ruin it)
2. I cooked it for 4 hours on high (I only had 4 hours before dinner)
3. I used precooked bacon (It was all we had in the house)

We will see how it turns out! I'll post a verdict later.

Bacon-Wrapped Apple BBQ Chicken
3-4 chicken breasts
1/2 cup BBQ sauce
1-2 apples, peeled and grated
1 lemon, juiced
6-8 slices bacon

Directions:
1. In small bowl, combine BBQ sauce with grated apple and lemon juice.
2. Place chicken breasts in base of crock pot, pour BBQ/apple mixture over the chicken. Wrap 2 pieces of bacon around each chicken breast. Set to low and cook for 8 hours.


The website says to serve with sweet potatoes, baked potatoes, mashed potatoes or rice. I think that we'll probably opt for rice because that's what we have in the house but I'd love some sweet potatoes!

Verdict:

This was not my favorite but we might try it again. I made a LOT of modifications on this one because I wasn't planning on making it and so I had to use what I had in the house. In the future I think I'd use a sweeter BBQ sauce than I had on hand and also use raw bacon (I used precooked for the recipe). Also, a honey crisp apple would probably bring a lot of flavor. We'll see. It was super easy! One thing that I learned was that I hate using a manual grater. I never use it but I thought it would be faster than using the food processor (when you consider the cleaning). WRONG! I should have just used the food processor to grate the apple. Oh well! Live and learn!