From the LaGrange, GA Junior League Cookbook:

Baked Potato Soup

4 large baking potatoes
2/3 cup butter
2/3 cup all purpose flour
6 cups milk
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
4 green onions, chopped and divided
12 slices of bacon, cooked, crumbled, divided
1 1/4 cups shredded cheddar cheese, divided
8 oz sour cream.

Wash potato and prick several times and bake at 400 F for 1 hour (or until done). Let cool and peel skins off potatoes and dice cooked potatoes (size depends on how chunky you want it).

Melt butter in heavy saucepan over low heat; add flour, stirring until smooth. Cook 1 minute, stirring constantly until mixture is thickened and bubbly. Whisk in milk and then whisk in 1 cup of cheese, until it's melted. Add diced potato, 1/2 bacon, and 2 tablespoons of green onions. Cook until thoroughly heated, mashing the potatoes if desired and adding extra milk to get desired consistency.

Serve with remaining green onions, bacon and cheese. Makes 10 cups.

Oooh, I may have to make that Friday. Yum. Thanks for the recipe!

Next time I make it for the two of us I'm going to wing it and see if I can make 2 servings.

If you just quarter everything you'll make 2 1/4 servings and everything looks simple enough to quarter. Also that sounds good.

And now I'm making a pot of black eye pea soup. I had pulled out a chunk of leftover ham from the freezer and I don't want to just refreeze it. Although I realize now I'm probably going to end up freezing some of the black eye peas. I also realized my kale has gone bad and I'm running low on freezer bags, I was at the store and I could have bought both.

Tomorrow, if I feel up to it, I'm going to make cornbread.

I have to say the lithium hasn't made me feel any worse than I have been, I still don't feel like I'm at a therapeutic dose, but I'm able to cook and keep up with the dishes (even though it's a never ending cycle of dirtying and rewashing the same dishes).

Today my upstairs neighbor had a bunch of us over for New Year's brunch: eggs, greens, black eyed peas (in hoppin' John), and biscuits. It's been a gray, rainy day, so I spent most of the rest of it with a cat on my lap. Tomorrow I'll try my hand at making osh (a traditional Persian vegetable soup).

Everyone has gone home from our New Year's party. Frank came and brought the Winter Solstice beer that has been talked about so much. I tried a sip of TCG's glass, who really liked it. I'm not much of a beer person, but it seemed tasty. We should have enough food to feed us for the week.

I'm still at my friend's house I VA. I'm makings black eyed peas, collard greens (I cheated and went frozen)' ham, and cornbread. The glaze for the ham is brown sugar and a splash of TJ's sparking apple cider.

Also, as a side note, Teppy and I were lunch sisters, as I also had TJ's scallops wrapped in bacon for lunch.

Vortex, you were on my mind the last couple days as I've cooked some bacon and saved the fat in a jar. "This is a Vortex approved jar," I would think to myself as I reheated some chicken in bacon fat to put in Emmett's burrito.

I am not happy with the way the pea soup came out. It's edible but it called for chili powder, which I put in but it's one dimensional. I prefer the version from a vegetarian cook book I have that has allspice and other things. And I cooked the peas too long, I think they are too soft to handle freezing and refreezing.

I just said, "Go away. You're an idiot" to a Kaiser support person. As I've said before, if you're in a Kaiser office, you're generally getting good care. If you have to deal with the phone system, you're in the ninth circle of hell.

Just because I need to rant somewhere:

I have an infusion appointment for bone-strengthening medicine that helps slow the effects of bone mets. There's nothing traumatic about that. However, they call a day or two before to make sure I'm coming before they order the medication. The nurse I work with left a message Monday afternoon that I had an appointment tomorrow and she needed to confirm it. She was obviously thinking "next working day," but that was just an omen of the confusion to come. When I tried to call back, the oncology number kept going to behavioral health, with no options to leave a message. I kept fighting with trying to get through until after 5, when the main switchboard closes.

I kept trying, but the number never worked. I finally decided to try through the regular switchboard to see if I could leave a message, and that took me through a rabbit hole that finally sent me to the guy who said he'd have an advice nurse call me. He's the one I called an idiot. If you can't leave a simple message, why are you even on the phone?

More to the point, the oncology number includes the extensions to the 24-hour oncology advice nurse and to get the oncologist on call. I was just having a communications problem; someone else could have been throwing up all day.

An advice nurse called back finally, said she'd send a message, and said she'd report the problem. Apparently they put in a new system on Friday. I shudder to think it's been out all this time. Also, if they don't have my medicine, I'm going to be royally pissed.