Hello all, it’s good to be back!  I haven’t posted in awhile, for a variety of reasons.  I didn’t make a huge Christmas dinner this year because we had to leave the day after Christmas to attend my niece’s wedding in California and I didn’t want to make the big dinner and then have to throw it all away so we had takeout from Outback Steakhouse on Christmas Eve for our Christmas dinner while we watched “Muppet Christmas Carol”.  We’re back now and will have both the Christmas Eve traditional dinner and the big Christmas dinner sometime this week.  Bob bought a ham today for the dinner and also some bread bowls so we made some ham and potato soup which truly is delicious and pretty easy to make.  The recipe came from allrecipes.com.

3 1/2 cups peeled and diced potatoes (we left the skins on and used about 4 cups)

1/3 cup diced celery

1/3 cup finely chopped onion (used about 1 cup)

3/4 cup diced cooked ham (I think we ended up using about 2 cups)

3 1/4 cups water (I added an additional cup)

2 tablespoons chicken bouillon granules

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon pepper (I used 1/2 teaspoon)

5 tablespoons butter

5 tablespoons flour

2 cups milk (I used skim and it came out great)

1  Combine potatoes, celery, onion, ham and water in a large stockpot.  Bring to a boil, then cook over medium heat until potatoes are tender, about 10 – 15 minutes.  Stir in bouillon, salt and pepper.

2  In a separate saucepan, melt butter over medium low heat.  Whisk in four and cook, stirring occasionally until thick, about 1 minute.  Slowly stir in milk as not to allow lumps to form until all of the milk has been added.  Continue stirring over medium low heat until thick, 4 – 5 minutes.

3  Stir in milk mixture into stockpot and cook until soup is heated through.