Creamy potato spinach soup

Warm your belly on a frosty winter evening. Bacon imparts a smoky flavor to this hearty potato spinach soup that eats like a meal.

Ingredients:

2 or 3 strips of bacon

6-8 small red or golden potatoes, peeled, halved, and then sliced

olive oil

one medium sized onion, diced

3 cloves garlic, diced

one large can of chicken broth

salt and pepper to taste

fresh spinach leaves, torn up into manageable bits (?)

2 cups milk

Procedure:

In the bottom of a large soup pot, sizzle up two or three strips of bacon and cook until just done but not crispy. Drain most of the fat but keep a little coating on the bottom. Crumble up the bacon.

To the bacon fat, add a little olive oil and turn the heat on low to medium. Add the diced onion and garlic. Sautee, adjusting heat as necessary, until the onion is translucent but not brown. If the stove gets too hot, do damage control by removing from the heat and letting the pot cool down a bit.

Next, return pot to the stove, add your sliced potatoes to the pot and cook on medium heat. Make sure there's enough oil to keep everything from sticking, turning as necessary. Season with salt and pepper as you go. Once the potatoes are sauteed a bit, add the chicken broth, and let cook on medium heat for 2 hours or until potatoes are soft and all the flavors have "gelled together". I suggest you taste test periodically to see how things are progressing.

When the potato soup is fully cooked, remove from stove and let cool for about 15 minutes. When cool, add the milk - but do it gradually and temper the milk first by pouring a little of the soup into the milk, stirring it, pouring a little more soup into the milk, and then finally transferring the tempered soup-milk mixture back into the pot with the rest of the soup.

Once the milk has been added, you want to get it to thicken up a bit. The starch in the potatoes, combined with the milk, will accomplish this, but you need to give a helping hand by stirring frequently so the milk doesn't boil and curdle. Trust me, nobody enjoys curdled soup. So stir, stir, and stir some more. The soup will probably take another half-hour or so to finish cooking, although I must confess I'm really not sure, as I "wing" nearly all of my dinner recipes.

At the very end, when you're ready to serve, stir in the spinach leaves. They'll wilt in the hot soup but hopefully stay a nice, healthy dark green color.

Hopefully, you can take it from here. Bon appetit!

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