Soup-er Saturday

PBS Create usually has a theme for their Saturday shows and today was 'Soup-er Saturday" and how appropriate it was since Mike is quite sick (but tomorrow we are going fishing to try and "cure" his sickness...sure sure). After spending the morning watching some of our favorite chefs (*cough* Julia Child *cough*) I decided I needed to make soup. Since we have a 10lbs bag of russet potatoes in the fridge I had already decided on this Creamless Potato-Celery Soup from the Light Cooking book (pg 119, I think) except I was going to use carrots instead of celery (I apologize for the glare...this book is shiny):

Then I thought " I have that chicken carcass I saved from the roast chicken last week, I should make my own chicken stock". And thus I did. Here is it at the start:

And after I strained it and jarred it:

It finished too late to be used in my soup today, but as soon as I try it I will let you know how it is. Oh, and I roughly followed my Betty Crocker cookbooks to make it. They said a layer of fat on top of the stock helps store it longer but to make sure to skim it off before use. Got it!

After I started the stock, I made some more of those fake buttermilk whole wheat biscuits I made the other day. Now you may be asking yourself "You already ate all those biscuits? You piggy!", but I assure you there are still tons left. I had some more milk left that had just gone bad and I wanted to use it, so I actually made the freezer buttermilk biscuits. Here is my beautiful dough....the mixer is so awesome!

To prep them for freezing you can cut them how ever you like. I chose squares since I am so creative:

And then you put them on a sheet and pop them in the freezer for a few hours till they are solid. Then put them in an air tight container and they will last up to a month. 

 

Then when you are ready for them just pop them in the oven! So when we finally finish the biscuits I made before, we can have more....yay! I use whole wheat flour alot in place of white (or a mixture of the two) not only to be healthy but Mike and I both really like the flavor. It's sort of an acquired taste I think, so if you haven't tried baking with whole wheat flour before I suggest only replacing a 1/4 of your flour with it until you get used to it. Just a suggestion!

Okay, biscuits done. Now time to start the soup. Here is everything simmering:

Normally I would just leave my soups like this, but since this was supposed to be a creamy soup the recipe called for putting half the soup into a blender (and we just got one!) to puree and then adding it back to the rest of the soup and adding a little skim milk. And the finished product:

 

Oh it was soooo good! It's really really creamy! I wonder how it would have been if we had used celery like the recipe called for. I didn't peel the potatoes either and it still came out very smooth. Even if you aren't a big fan of creamy soups, you should totally try this one. The recipe doesn't call for salt or pepper but I still added just a little :)

And now it's time to relax....tomorrow will be spent in Sarasota so probably no cooking. To tie you over, please enjoy this picture of Charlie when he was a puppy: