Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What do you Hear?

Potato Soup and Chicken Pot Pie

I have a really yummy recipe for potato soup. It's pretty basic, easy to make, and delicious.  It's a family recipe that I've tweaked over the years.  I also use almost the same recipe to make chicken pot pie and homemade chicken pot pie is fantastic.  It's been pretty cold recently so we've been making lots of soups and comfort foods.  I'll start with the soup recipe and then show you how to tweak it for chicken pot pie.

Potato Soup
2 medium sized potatoes
2 carrots
2 stalks of celery
1/2 onion
1 clove garlic minced
1/2 stick butter
1/4 cup flour
1 cup half and half
1 chicken bouillon cube or equivalent
salt and pepper to taste

Dice the potatoes, carrots, celery, and onion and put in a pot with garlic and just enough water to cover.  Ryan and I are not huge onion and garlic people so there's not that much in here, sometimes I even leave the garlic out.  If you do like a lot of onion and garlic you could double those quantities.  Add salt, bring to boil and let it sit until veggies are tender, about 8 minutes.

While the veggies are cooking, in a separate pan melt butter, add the flour when the butter has melted.  Mix the flour and butter together and let them cook together for a while over medium heat.  Don't let it burn.  Add the bouillon or better then bouillon, whatever you prefer to use.  I use chicken because that's what I have, but you could use vegetable if you wanted.  It just gives the soup a bit of extra flavor.  Add the  half and half , you could also use just plain milk, I've done this before when I don't have half and half, just use a little less so the soup is still thick. Let the mixture heat up until it becomes very thick.

Then just add the cream mixture to the veggies when they are done cooking.

Mix thoroughly over medium heat until the soup looks like potato soup.  If it's a little runny you can try to let it cook for a bit longer to thicken up, it will also thicken up a bit if you let it sit on the counter before serving.  If the soup is too thick just add more milk or  half and half.  Also, be sure to taste it and add salt and pepper.  I think I added 1/2 - 1 teaspoon of salt, just to give you an idea.

Serve while the soup is still warm.  Sprinkle some grated cheese on top.  We like to eat this with some french bread or garlic bread.  It also goes well in bread bowls.

This doesn't make a ton of soup, just barely enough for me and Ryan for dinner, and then usually a bit of leftovers for lunch the next day.  You could definitely double or triple the recipe for larger groups, I just made a smaller recipe for me cause we don't need that much for our small family.

Now, for the chicken pot pie recipe.  It's basically the same but you add grilled chicken.  And I usually add less liquid so it's not so soupy.  What I do is make everything the same, and then I use a slotted spoon to add the veggies and then add however much of the liquid I want until it's just right.  The other difference is that you make pie crust to put it in.  Use your favorite flaky pie crust recipe and make enough to line the pan and cover the top.  If you use the soup recipe above, this will give you enough for an 8 inch pie.  I usually cut that in half and put it in this smaller baking dish we have.  Again, this is usually enough for just us, and maybe some leftovers for lunch the next day.  Here's the bottom crust.

I fry up some chicken tenders in butter and salt and pepper.

Then I just add it to the soup mixture, and pour it into my crust.  Make sure to taste the mixture with the chicken before you add more salt.  The chicken and crust are a little salty so I don't usually add any extra salt when I'm making chicken pot pie like I do when I'm making soup.

Put the top crust on and pinch the edges together.  Bake in a 425 degree oven for 15-20 minutes, or until golden brown.  We're really just cooking the crust here, everything else has already been cooked.  You can let it set up a bit before serving or you can just serve right away which is usually what we do cause we're too hungry to wait.

Lucas Being Cute

Lucas says and does a lot of funny things, but I feel like all I ever say on the blog is exactly that.  So today I decided to be more specific so that I have something to laugh at when I look back in a year and read this post.

This morning while I was getting dressed, Lucas was trying his best to clog the toilet by filling it up with toilet paper.

Me: Lucas, stop doing that.
Lucas: Mommy, no yell at me! (yelling)
Me: Shhhh
Lucas: No shh shh me!

At least he's using his words?

Yesterday I was babysitting for my friend while she went to the doctor. She has a two year old and a baby about 8 months old.  Lucas loves to play with the baby and bring him toys.  At one point when the baby was laying down on his back, Lucas came over and grabbed the baby's feet and wiggled them and said, "choo choo".  Ryan used to do this to Lucas when he was a baby, and Lucas has seen Ryan do this to babies recently and he was mimicking his daddy.  It's so cute when they start acting grown up.

One more funny thing that Lucas has been doing lately is to run around the house with his arms stretched in front of him saying, "Buzz Lightyear to the rescue!"

He's at a really fun stage right now and we're loving it while it lasts!

Playing with Cousins

I'm finally getting around to posting the last of the pictures from our trip to Utah.  The last day we were there we decided to go bowling.  The kids had a blast!

Look at those adorable bowling tiny bowling shoes!

Lucas carried his ball around for a long time and then finally when it was time to take the group picture he said it was too heavy.  Oh well.  They are a cute group of kids.

The kids used the bumpers and this ball ramp, so they all ended up doing really well, and beat most of the adults.

I liked my chartreuse ball.  This was after the game was over and Lucas was a tad grumpy and hungry.  Lunch time.

After lunch we took the kids to get their hair cut.  Here's Lucas sitting in his seat, waiting for his turn.  He really likes the idea of getting his hair cut and asks me all the time if he can go.

 BUT... when they actually start cutting his hair he freaks out.  He hates having his hair cut.  Here I am holding his head in place while she's trimming his side burns.  It looks way more calm than it was.

And here's all the kids with their cute hair cuts.  I LOVE this picture.

Most of our evenings were pretty laid back.  We just hung out and played.  Ryan and I took turns cuddling/eating Rose.

And then we started the long drive home to California.  Okay, ours wasn't quite as long as Ryan's brother's family had, but it was long enough.  Lucas did a little better on the way home than he did on the way out.  He's so cute sometimes.

We had such a fun time visiting with family.  Thanks again for making our Christmas so much fun!  And thanks to Derek and Sandy for taking cute pictures of the kids and letting me steal them for my blog.

Happy New Year

Sorry, I know this is about a week late, where did the time go?  My sister did a New Year's blog post with a recap of 2011 and I thought it was cute so I decided to do one too.

January - We went to my Grandpa's funeral and a few days later had a scare with Lucas where we ended up in the hospital.  Wow, we did not start out the year very well.  But on the bright side, Lucas learned to say "please".

February - Ryan got a job offer with Lawrence Livermore National Labs. Yay!

March - We took Lucas to see farm animals and have his first pony ride.  I also started tutoring high school students in Math.

April - Lucas had his first Easter egg hunt and we went green and started using reusable shopping bags.

May - Lucas turned 2 and we started potty training. We also spent a lot of time visiting Ryan on campus while he finished up his research.

June - Ryan defended his thesis and passed! We also spent a lot of time playing outside in the sprinklers, at the pool, and at the duck pond.

July - We went to Brasil!  We also said good bye to family and friends, packed up our apartment, and moved to California.

August - We lived in a hotel for three weeks before moving into our first real house; we don't own it but it has a yard and a garage so we're still pretty much in love with it.  We also went driving around, sight seeing, and eating Ghirardelli sundaes in San Francisco.

September - We made some new friends and spent a lot of time unpacking and getting settled into our new home.  Lucas graduated from a crib to a toddler bed.

October - We went to the Discovery Museum with Grandpa Crapo, and Lucas went Trick or Treating for the first time.

November - We celebrated our 5th anniversary and went on a family trip to San Diego.

December - We had a fun Christmas visiting both sets of parents and lots of Brothers and Sisters.  Lucas had a blast playing with cousins.

I had fun looking back at all our old blog posts to see what we had done throughout the year.  There were also a bunch of craft and recipe posts and I was pretty impressed by myself, and remembered a few recipes that we need to make again.  We had a pretty good year and I'm looking forward to making this year just as good, if not better.

Just Like His Daddy....

I'm still working on getting the last few pictures from our trip posted, but in the mean time, Lucas put Ryan's glasses on yesterday and decided to walk around wearing them for a while.  He is so funny!  Doesn't he look just like his daddy?