So here’s the follow-up to my grocery-shopping adventure. Kylie Cooks, take one!

After coming home with my haul, I decided that the most delicious-sounding thing to make (and the only recipe I actually found all the ingredients for) would be baked potato soup. I’m a huge soup fan (but I only really eat a few different kinds) and now that spring is right around the corner (knock on wood) it will soon be too warm outside to even consider sitting down with a hearty bowl of potato soup, much less keeping the stovetop on long enough to cook it. Our house is poorly insulated (read, not at all) so it gets stiflingly hot in the summer months.

I started getting ready to cook just as Thomas and his friend E came home from work to play some games. They both work in the same kitchen, so before I knew it I was getting instructions in stereo; they were both giving me different bits of advice or would chuckle when I pled ignorance on their directions and asked for help.

Thomas basically threw my “recipe” out the window, because he said the final product would taste awful. So, after that declaration, I just turned to him to wait for instructions. He was now my recipe, albeit much more 3D and much less flat and on paper.

However, some of his instructions were laden with kitchen jargon, and I would just look at him and wait for him to clarify, in English, exactly what he wanted me to do with the potatoes (or onions, carrots, cauliflower, etc).

I am so impressed with potatoes in this shot:

Not. I believe my exact words were: “Take a picture of this so I can prove I’ve cooked.” But, I pushed through and finished preparing the vegetables. Right after I added the chicken broth (which seemed odd to add to a potato soup…) Thomas and his buddy disappeared to go game. Right in the middle of all the action! That’s when he told me to “follow the recipe,” but at this point I had no idea where I was in the damn thing, so he just gave me the rest of the instructions verbally and off he went.

Lots of boiling and a little scare with the immersion blender later (that thing is FREAKY, okay?) I had my soup! If you follow me on Twitter, you’ll also know that by this time I was drunk, thanks to La Fin du Monde (damn strong French beer!) and was tweeting Hannah Hart (of the My Drunk Kitchen fame) in an attempt to get a retweet. Sadly, that never happened. But I was still very impressed with myself for completing the recipe (especially in my compromised state of mind). A few garnishes later (bacon, sour cream, cheese and chives) and my bowl of delicious was good to go:

I don’t care if soup is a relatively simple thing to make, I was (AND STILL AM) SO impressed with myself! Nothing was burnt, or raw, or gross, or anything! It was just a delicious bowl of soup, as evidenced by the fact that I had three of them (oops). I blame the beer.

To conclude, here’s a picture of Lu hugging his toy mouse, just for the sheer cuteness of it:

Next up in my culinary adventures: stuffed mushrooms! I’ve made them before, so it shouldn’t be a huge stretch for me to make basically the same thing again but with a different filler (in this case, more veggies and breadcrumbs and less crab and cream cheese). Thomas said he would be less involved with the cooking process this time…