Creamy Potato Soup and Mom's Homemade Breadsticks

This soup is fabulous for cold winter nights.  The extra veggies make it really yummy too.  If desired, frozen broccoli and/or cauliflower can be added.  

Tip:  To make this soup faster, look for bags of frozen, diced onions and sliced carrots at the grocery store.  Also, some stores carry "soup starters" which contain all the veggies you need for this soup.  

Ingredients:

7 c. diced potatoes (add any extra)

1 ½ c. chopped celery

1 ½ c. sliced carrots

1 c. chopped onion

Cut up vegetables.  Cook in 4 cups water and 4 bouillon cubes.  Cook until vegetables are tender (12 to 15 minutes after vegetables start to boil).  Add undrained vegetables to white sauce.  Heat thoroughly.

White Sauce:

1 c. butter or margarine

7 c. milk

1 c. flour

2 tsp. salt

½ tsp. pepper

Melt butter.  Blend in flour, salt and pepper.  Add milk.  Cook over medium heat until it thickens and boils.  Continue stirring to desired consistency.  Remove from heat until undrained vegetables are added.

Makes 16 servings (1 cup each).

Breadsticks:

This recipe comes from my mom, who is the queen of speedy breadsticks.  I remember helping her roll out the breadsticks for dinner and having so much fun cooking together when I was growing up.

2 c. warm water

2 T. yeast

2 tsp. sugar

2 tsp. salt

2 T. oil

4 c. flour

Stir yeast in warm water and dissolve.

Let sit for 1 minute.  Add sugar.  Let it sit until it starts bubbling (5 minutes).  Add salt and oil.  Add flour one cup at a time, stirring after each addition.  Roll into breadsticks or pizza crust.  Let rise for 10-15 minutes.  Bake at 400° for 10 minutes or until lightly browned. 

Variation:  Roll dough into a rectangle, about ½ inch thick.  Using a pizza cutter or knife, cut the dough into inch-wide strips.  Dip each strip in melted butter; place on cookie sheet.  Sprinkle with garlic powder.  Let rise.  Bake as directed above.

This dough also makes wonderful pizza crust.  (Yields two large rectangles.) 

Mom VDG's Incredible (and easy!) Salsa

My mother-in-law came up with this wonderful recipe for a fresh-tasting salsa without all the cutting, chopping, and prep time.  It's the best!

Here are the ingredients:

Your favorite store-bought salsa (I use Pace brand, medium heat)

Fresh pico de gallo (the refrigerated kind found in the salad section of the grocery store)

Cilantro

Basically, you make the salsa to your individual taste and how much salsa you need (it only keeps in the fridge for a day or two).  Roughly, the measurements are 1 cup salsa to 1-2 big spoonfuls of pico to 1 T. cilantro.  Put ingredients in the blender, and blend for just a couple seconds (just 'til cilantro is chopped up).   You still want chunks of tomato, onion, etc. in the salsa. You can always add a little more pico de gallo if you blended it too much.  

Enjoy with your favorite tortilla chips!  Thanks Mom!