I guess it's all in how you were raised!

I've been making potato soup for many, many moons now, and i will say that I'm WAY better at it than i was 20 years ago. (suffice it to say that the DOG would not even eat my leftover soup back then!)

i don't even remember when, exactly, i learned how, or who taught me to make potato soup, but i feel that I've finally perfected my recipe, and it's actually one of my favorite meals. here's the recipe, if you'd like to try it yourself:

Jennifer's potato soup

peel and wash a bunch of potatoes. (i usually use almost 5 lbs) using a large pot, quarter the potatoes, and fill the pot halfway. add water, enough to just barely cover the potatoes. bring to boil, and cook until soft. using a hand held potato masher, mash all the potatoes, but be sure and leave it a bit lumpy.

then add:

salt (i like to use coarse kosher salt)

parsley

corn (creamed corn is best!)

ham (if you have it)

after plunking the remaining ingredients in the pot, add enough milk to make the soup more soupy. (about half a gallon) stir together, and simmer until hot. i can't stress enough how important it is to watch the soup after this point, and make sure that it does not burn! just before serving, add 8 oz. of cubed cream cheese. stir until melted. serve.

YUM! this is how all my kids grew up eating potato soup, and we all really like it, especially when served with hot, fresh buns.

but a few weeks ago... we were at our church pot-luck dinner, and Dave found the potato soup of his dreams- just like his mother made when he was a boy! he was eager to come home and find the recipe for me. we finally located it in an old Amish cookbook.

Dave's potato soup:

8 potatoes, peeled and diced
1/2 cup chopped celery
3 cups water
1 stick butter
half gallon milk
2 T parsley
S & P to taste
4 diced hard boiled eggs


cook the potatoes and celery in the water and butter until tender. then add the milk, seasonings and eggs and heat thoroughly.


Dave (who BTW is very hard to culinarily impress) declared this the New Official Potato Soup Of Our Household. yes, he liked it THAT much!

but, to all of us, it was more than a little strange to have eggs floating around in our potato soup. it was very disconcerting, even. what were these strange things invading our soup? eggs are for breakfast, not soup! we're not from Lancaster county, after all, so this will take some getting used to.

so the moral of the story is: it all depends on how you were raised. for Dave, having corn and ham in his potato soup was as equally foreign to him as eggs are to us. i guess A and B will have the best of both worlds, or soups, as it were!

just for fun, register your 2 cents worth in the Great Potato Soup Poll of 2009!