Baked Potato Soup

Origin: USA

Prep time: 30 minutes

Total time: 1.5 Hours (but totally worth it!)

Being a chilly winter night in Wisconsin nothing seemed better than a hot bowl of soup... With lots of cheese of course!

I think the secret ingredient in making this baked potato soup taste absolutely delicious was the chive and onion cream cheese. Not only did it help with the consistency, but added that real baked potato topping.

Nothing better than fresh chives. We sprinkled about a handful into the soup and used the rest to garnish.

We needed a side, as well as a healthy addition to our starchy potato soup, So we decided on a quick veggie stir fry. It was a pre-packaged frozen asparagus stir fry with yellow squash, carrots, green beans, and assorted peppers. Sarah added a little olive oil to the wok and seasoned the veggies with soy sauce, lemon juice, a pinch of garlic powder,salt and pepper. They turned our great and only took about 10 mins.

Our final product tasted like a fresh out of the oven baked potato! It was the perfect meal for our cold winter day and with a nice glass of wine and good conversation it topped off our night.

Link: Baked Potato Soup Recipe

Happy Birthday Megan!

Origin: USA/France
Prep time: 15 minutes
Total time: 45-50 minutes

For Megan's birthday, I decided to put a slight twist on a simple cake mix. The idea came from my wines and spirits class last semester.... A champagne cake! All I did was simply buy a boxed cake mix and substitute champagne for the water when mixing ingredients together. Ideally, you are supposed to serve the champagne you used with the cake but I forgot to buy another bottle when I was at the store...maybe next time?

 On the top i drizzled melted chocolate chips and almond bark in a criss cross pattern...

 Happy birthday Megan!

Serve with fresh or frozen mixed berries. This is definitely a dessert that pleased the masses!

Although some of us have quite a heavy class load this semester, we are excited to start cooking this Thursday evening! Stay tuned.

Cheers,
Lisa

we promise to keep up with this blog!

After many Thursday evenings spent in our kitchens cooking (in our opinion) some pretty delicious dishes, we decided that we would create a place that we could archive all of our culinary ventures and share them with you! School starts in 2 weeks, which means that Sarah, Megan, and I will continue our weekly routine of getting together for some laughs, a glass of wine (or two), and of course some new and exciting recipes.

This weekly tradition started at the beginning of our senior year... We can't believe we didn't think of doing this sooner! So far, cooking together has been a great way of catching up on weekly gossip and expanding our tastes in worldly cuisine. Some of last semesters favorite dishes are as follows: "breakfast for dinner" (always a classic), enchiladas, home made chinese, thai lettuce wraps, chicken parmesan with garlic asparagus, and eggplant parmesan, indian naan with other curry sides, and swedish meatballs with potatoes.... the list goes on and on!

Thanks for taking interest in our cooking adventures, and stay tuned for some awesome recipes.

Cheers-
Lisa