POtato PoTAto

I LOVE Le Madeliene French Country Cafe. It's a little cafe chain that has restaurants all over Texas (but not in my town), Oklahoma, Louisiana, Maryland, and Virginia.  I have yet to have anything there that I don't like.  I could happily swim in a pool of their Strawberry Romanoff and eat my way out (it's my favorite dessert).

When I was a kid, I only knew of Le Madeliene by name.  They sponsored a lot of my favorite shows (chiefly the Granada Sherlock Holmes) on KERA, the PBS station beamed all the way in from the then-mysterious big cities known as the Metroplex (Dallas-Fort Worth).

As a teen, I worked in a restaurant that had several "inspired by La Madeliene" recipes, but with the managers' own twists. That's where my love affair with their food started.

I didn't actually get to visit an actual Le Mad's restaurant until my Best Friend relocated to Dallas just a few years ago.  It was my very first real trip to Dallas and it was one of the first restaurants we visited (at my request).  I sat just outside the ice rink  at the Galleria, oblivious to anything but my Caesar salad, Strawberry Romanoff, and my potato soup.  I think my teen and my Bestie were talking, but I can't be sure. I was too into my food.

Now I love potato soup, and I have had lots of great soups (McAlister's, Jason's Deli, and others), and some not so great (canned and some restaurants burned from memory), but the McLemore Bass/ Le Madeliene potato soup is my measuring standard.

Staring down the barrel of yet another ice storm and potential snow day yesterday, I found that my thoughts were firmly on anything potato soup.  I even popped by McAlisters for a cup at lunch, but that didn't fix my craving. It only strengthened my desire to have it for dinner.  I was going to have to make it. And I couldn't quite remember how to make it. 

I straight up typed, "la madeliene's potato soup copycat recipe" [sic] into Google and found this recipe:  link

After deciding I had enough of the ingredients at home to wing it, I set my mind on doing the afore mentioned recipe, with modifications, of course.  We never used leeks at McLemore Bass (at least to my knowledge), and I think I remembered it had celery, garlic, and bacon.

That's when I realized I didn't have potatoes. I had to go to the store. $@%#!  Do you know what it's like to go to the store in the south in the hours preceeding any storm system that brings more than a 3% chance of any kind of precipitation?

"Stanz: What [s]he means is Old Testament, Mr. Mayor, real wrath-of-God type stuff!

Venkman: Exactly.

Stanz: Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky! Rivers and seas boiling!

Spengler: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes!

Winston Zeddmore: The dead rising from the grave!

Venkman: Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria!"

(Ghostbuster, 1984.)

We'd already had a surprise from the slick stuff during the morning hours. There were tons of wrecks because the school system decided that the kids had already had two snow days and didn't need a third, and went about life as normal, as roads deteriorated. So, yeah, the town was crazier than normal.

I strengthened my resolve to stop at the grocery after picking up the teen.  The grocery store between my house and my mom's is a special kind of stupid on a normal day: selection stinks, the staff is rude, selection stinks, and the majority of customers are awful. I was, however, only going in for the one kind of potatoes they stock, so I promised myself I had to do it.

Until....

My wonderful Mommy came to my rescue with a bag of Steam and Mash.  I don't normally buy these. I can buy potatoes and boil and mash with almost as much effort as tossing this bag in the microwave, and I can control the ingredients.  BUT, beggars who wish to avoid interacting with some of the troglodytes at that grocery and the mass hysteria of impending ice doom cannot be choosers.  I snatched up that bag of Steam and Mash and made a Dash out the door before Mom could change her mind.

Here is my recipe:

2 cans of chicken broth or stock (regular can sized)

Future Potato Soup Friends, Unite!

1 bag of Steam and Mash russets (or, preferably real russets, but it will lengthen cooking time drastically). Mine were still frozen.
2 stalks celery (not from source recipe, but delicious)
1/2 med sweet or yellow onion (mine was sweet because they were on sale at last trip to grocery)
1/2 package of turkey sausage link (not from original recipes at all, added for teen; bacon or ham would be better)
1/2 cup (aprox) of half and half (more/less based on preference)
2-3 tbs real butter, divided into tablespoons, more or less to suit your tastes (Don't use the fake crap. Remember, "Real Butter is Love.")

Chop celery, onion, sausage to desired size. 

In your soup pot, sauce pan, whatever-- you can see mine in the pic-- use some butter to saute onion and celery until the onion is translucent. Don't feel pressured to brown them.

Dump in the cans of chicken broth (I would strain if you have lots of fat-nasties on the top).

Dump in frozen potatoes.

Sprinkle with thyme and pepper to taste.

Bring to a boil and reduce to a strong simmer.  Cook until potatoes are thawed, heated, and starting to fall apart.  Mash some with the back of a spoon, as this will start to thicken the soup. It was 10-15 minutes for me.

I sauteed my sausage in a pan, with a tiny smidge of butter (only to keep it from sticking) to brown it just a little. This is an optional step, as the stuff is already cooked, and will heat in the soup.  You could also cook your bacon at this point (a step I totally endorse, and would have done, if we had bacon at the time).

Dump the sausage into the soup pan and add a tablespoon of butter.

This is what my soup looked like at this point.  I haven't added any milk.  The broth reduced a bit and the potatoes fell apart.

Add about 1/2 cup of cream or half and half.  I used a little more than half a cup-ish of half and half.  I don't recommend ust milk. You can use it, but it's not as creamy and you might have to thicken your soup with something.  Some of you may like it. I won't hold it against you... well, I might, but I will be discreet about it. I can't promise I won't give you stink face, though.


Bring the heat back up to a near boil, but don't let it boil. You have a milky product in your pan, and it does funny (gross) things at high heat if you leave it alone at too high a temperature. Stir frequently over the next 10ish minutes, before ladling in bowls and serving.

At this point, a wild teen appeared from her bedroom, drooling and sniffing about.  She dramatically threw herself about the kitchen, claiming starvation.  Apparently, the journey down the hall from her room is perilous and fraught with dragons (if Eryn Grace "be dragons").  If your family reports to the kitchen prematurely, you can fend them off with spoons.  It works at my house-- well, except for the cat looking for a wayward bit of food-- spoons don't work on them.  The spoon gets hairy, too. 

 It was pretty dern good, if I do say so.  As I have alluded, it would be better with bacon (but I am not as big a fan of that sausage as the teen is).  It's also really good with a little cheese on top.  Le Madeliene offers theirs with shredded cheddar and bacon.  Mozzarella is good, too.  I served mine with a little Irish Soda Bread (made it in the crock pot-- that recipe is coming eventually).

Pic of the leftover soup

We each had two good sized bowls last night and I had enough left overs to squeeze three bowls out this afternoon, too. You can easily double this recipe to feed more people.

The recipe reheated well, too.  It's better to reheat on the stove, over med-high heat, stirring frequently.  The pic above is second day soup as I reheated it.

There you have it.  Soup's on.  Make it.  Comment about it.

Oh, and Big Sis has "Real Butter is Love" aprons in her Etsy shop now.  It's quite cute.  She also has a TARDIS apron in her shop that is utterly adorable.

ETA:  I forgot my disclaimers.  I am not receiving any kind of endorsement from the restuarants mentioned above.  I don't think I even know anyone working for those restaurants anymore (and McLemore Bass went away as I knew it in 1998).  I don't own the Ghostbuster's quote either.  Ghostbusters belongs to its respective creative geniuses and studio.  I am simply a huge fangirl who owns a Real Ghostbusters animation still.  I don't make any money from this blog.  Did I cover my hiney enough?

The Microwave Magically Cleans Itself

I have a microwave.

I have a teenager.

Microwave + teenager = DISASTER

I grew up in a household where dinners were cooked in the microwave.  Seriously. Meatloaf was made in the microwave. I always thought it was a little weird. Non of my friends' moms did that, but it worked for my mom.

I remember her scrubbing the microwave with Windex and paper towels.  I didn't bother her when she did that. I am crazy, but I wasn't stupid.  She had to work hard to clean that gigantic mess.


I have a pretty powerful 1200wt microwave. It's smart enough to cook popcorn without burning it and steam veggies with the push of one button.  With two button pushes, I can defrost meat.  And that's all I care to do with it.  I prefer to cook on my stove and my oven.

The teenager? Ugh! I wish she would cook in the oven or on the stove. She likes the microwave.  A lot.
She's always been hard on it- when she was 8, she set fires inside of it-- twice... in a month.  To be fair, the first time, we have no idea what happened.  A 20 second bread stick reheat turned into an unexplained smoky mess.

Needless to say, my microwave is almost always a DISASTER.

Does the teen clean it?  HA! HA! HA! HA!  You must be joking.  She thinks we have a house elf or that it magically cleans on its own.

I have found a way to clean it almost by magic, though.  You may have even seen the tip floating on Pinterest and Facebook.  I've seen it so many times, I am not linking to a source web page. I also didn't take pictures this time, so I must ask you to paint pictures in your mind. 

Imagine, if you will, a metal cave with light dimmed by... uh, tomato sauce?  The walls are splattered like a culinary Jackson Pollock protege eager to please his master with over-exuberant fervor. There are mystery stains of dubious consistency below the plate.  The interior was once an almond color, but now it is impossible to isolate a single color.

Yuck.  I don't want to scrub this crap.  No wonder my mom was cranky. 

So, I take this tip I find on the Internet where you take a bowl of water, add some vinegar, and basically cook it until it magically turns into a house elf that scrubs your microwave, or something like that. 

Fill a microwave safe bowl (I used a 2c Pyrex bowl) just shy of 1/2 full of water and added enough vinegar to fill it most of the way full and pop it in the microwave. I ran the microwave at full power for 4 minutes and busied myself with dinner construction.  I didn't rush to the microwave when the timer went off, either. I let it sit.

Even after letting it sit for quite some time, all I had to do was wipe the microwave down. No scrubbing. The plate just rinsed clean with hot water-- the crap just melted away.  It was like ice cream melting on the hot, Texas sidewalk.  No lies.  The inside of my microwave looks brand-flipping new.  Take that, Teenage-Mess-Maker.

If only cleaning the rest of my house was that easy. 

Real Butter is Love

"Real Butter is Love.
Real Cheese is Respect.
Real People are Essential."
 -Tao of Scout-


"Real Butter is Love" is a phrase you have seen, and will continue to see, on my blog. I don't believe in margarine. I like ingredients that your average elementary school child can read, not things that remind me of my 10th grade chemistry class (...although, the lab partner I had was pretty hot.. ERR, never mind).  Cooking is enough chemistry for me without getting into complex chemical chains and whatnots. So, you get to read my sass about real food.

I have really creative great-friend (who I am convinced is secretly my sister) that is a Craft Super Hero.  She sews, and paints, and crafts-- all that stuff that I do in my head, but don't really do in real life. I know sometimes she can hear me squeeing over her stuff the entire 4/10 mile between our houses.

Not long after I featured my staunch Pro-Real status in my last blog, Big Sis got my permission to get crafty with my phrase (as if I would deny her!), and she made this apron holder: 

See it here at Whetsel's Wearables

You can't convince me that I haven't hit the big time now-- I have a catch phrase on a sign.  This is right up there with signing autographs after plays--wait, no, that one is a bit weird.  Cool, but weird.  This is a catch phrase on actual product! And it looks awesome.  Woot!  I will try to stay humble, though...  :-P

La Tea Dough

I love bread. I am short. Therefore, I love shortbread. Right?

Well, not really.  But I do love shortbread. Or tea biscuits. Or Danish Butter Cookies.  They are all pretty much variations on the same theme: butter and sugar with enough flour to bind them together. I love it; the teen loves it; the best friend loves it; my coworkers love it. What's not to love? It's butter and sugar.

After binging on Walker's Shortbread, Danish Butter Cookies and honey almond tea biscuits the week before and week of Christmas, you would think I had shorted out my craving? HA! As If.  More like I was on a mission to get fat... er, find more cookies.  Thus, I took to Pinterest looking for a tea biscuit recipe.

I did a little research because most of the recipes for shortbread and tea biscuits are nearly identical. Ask.com says it's a matter of flour and sugars. I didn't see that in the recipes I read.  There is a texture difference, however, between tea cookies and the Walker's Shortbread I picked up at the British Import store in my home town.

Remember that a biscuit is a cookie.

This is the recipe that I bounced off of:  Inspiration Recipe. 


Three ingredients?  Three common ingredients? Three common ingredients that were in my kitchen at the moment I found the recipe and I was home alone... and bored?  That oven was preheating before you could say, "Jolly Good."

I made cookies.  I didn't take pictures.  They weren't pretty anyway.   But never fear, reader. I made them again, taking liberties of my own, and I took pictures along the way.

According to the original recipe, you will need:

2 sticks of real butter, softened. I've told you before- do not use that fake crap. Real Butter is love.
1/2 cup packed brown sugar
2 1/2 cups of flour

I also add about a teaspoon of almond extract. I love the flavor it adds.  I made three variations this time, so there are two other ingredients (one for each variation) that I will mention in a bit.

I use an electric hand mixer, mixing bowl, rolling pin, and cookie cutters.  I measure the flour out into a separate bowl, have extra flour on hand for dusting, and bake my cookies on a pan covered in aluminum foil.

Preheat your oven to 300.  My oven thinks I should only bake at 350, so I really have to watch the temperature.  350 is too hot and you will end up with tan cookies (Not the "good tan," either).

Grated butter

I have no patience for waiting for my butter to sit around and soften, it works better slightly cool, so I grated it with a cheese grater.  It's a LOT faster than waiting for the butter to soften. It also makes working with the electric mixer easier. No jerky killing of butter sticks. 

Butter + Sugar +Mixer = Good

I pour the almond extract over the sugar after I dump the sugar in the butter.  Add to taste; I used about a teaspoon this time.  The flavor was pretty mild.  I like overkill. 

Creme the butter and sugar. I use my hand mixer starting on slow and then increasing to medium.

After combining the sugar and butter, I took a tip from a different recipe and popped the bowl in the fridge to chill the butter again for just a couple of minutes.  While that was in the fridge, I measured out my flour in a separate bowl

Slowly add the flour. The first time I made this, I added about a 1/4 a cup at a time.  The second time I made it, I dumped too much at one time. Do it slow, trust me.  Oh, and go lightly on the mixer switch-- don't accidentally turn it to 2 or 3 in a bowl full of flour.  Don't ask why.  Just trust me.

The original recipe says the recipe will be flaky.  My turns out to the consistency of bread crumbs.  It will stick to itself if I work it by hand, though.  If I were making my cheese straw recipe, I would add more butter. I don't have anyone guiding me, and I have made this recipe all of twice, so I just go with it.  It turns out ok. 

Once everything was combined, I gave the dough a time out in the fridge for a few minutes and cleared a space for the next step.  You need space. I didn't allow for the the space the first time. It was a pain in the ass.  The second time, I scrubbed my counters within an inch of sanity and just worked the dough directly on my floured counter top.

REALLY flaky dough right out of bowl

After kneading 4 mintues

You MUST knead the dough, just like the inspiration post says. I mean, REALLY work the dough. Squish. Punch. Smash. Pulverize. It will start to come together the longer it's worked with. I kneaded the big dough ball for about 8 minutes total, before dividing into three sections for different additions.

I kept one section plain and kneaded it another 3-5 minutes before rolling it in a ball and popping it back into the fridge.


If you are not adding anything, kneading a total of 10 minutes-ish, until the dough is a solid mass. I let mine rest a couple of minutes in the fridge, just long enough to wipe a dry paper towel over my space and dust with it flour again. I rolled/ smashed it out (somewhere between 1/4" and 1/2" thick) and attacked it with cookie cutters. The first time I used the pizza cutter. It was ok, but cookie cutters are fun!



Place the cookies on your cookie sheet. Prick the cookies with a fork a few times.  To be honest, I have forgotten this step both times. It's in most of the recipes I read, so it must be important, but it's not catastrophic if you forget to prick the cookies.

Bake cookies at 300.

16 minutes bad

How long?  Er, well... uh, you see.. well... for me it was 15 minutes.  I followed the recipe the first time and set the timer. At 16 minutes (inspiration post said 25, remember? I had it set for 25), I smelled something not so savory.  Luckily, the cookies weren't too far gone and my second batch came out beautiful at 15 minutes.  You want to take them out just as they start to turn a bit golden.  Check them around the 14 minute mark.  Watch them closely. Do not walk away from your oven thinking you have 3 minutes left and you can check Twitter.  Don't. Resist the urge. If you walk away from that oven, even if your oven says you have extra time, your temperature will shoot up to 350 in your oven and you will end up with tan cookies-- the bad tan I alluded to earlier.  Tan cookies taste ok, but the cookies are SOOOO much better, so much flakier, and so much prettier if you keep an eye on them.

Once they are out of the oven, dump on a plate. Brew a mug of Earl Grey tea with two sugars and a splash of milk (or beverage of choice). Take plate and tea to a secure location. Eat while watching BBC online.  My BBC programme of choice last night was Death Comes to Pemberley, but Sherlock is a brilliant choice (you cannot go wrong with Sherlock).  There is no shame.  Just wipe the crumbs off your chest when you're done.

 --Now the variations I spoke of--

I made Orange Zest Biscuits and Earl Grey Tea Biscuits.  I wasn't inspired by specific recipes, just titles as I looked though tea biscuit recipes on Pinterest.  I totally made this up, y'all.

After adding the extra ingredient, I kneaded the dough 3-5 minutes to really incorporate the ingredient through the entire bit of dough. Again, I let the dough rest in the fridge for a few minutes before rolling. The dough balls got really smooth and shiny-- which isn't always great when working with a butter based recipe (so I read). Chilling them seemed to help with that.

I repeated the same process-- rolling, cutting with cookie cutters, placing on the cookie sheet and baking 15ish minutes at 300.

Extra ingredients

For the Orange Zest biscuits, I used about 1/2 a teaspoon of dried orange peel for a small ball of dough.  I would probably go upwards of a tablespoon if making the whole batch.  Fresh zest would be ideal, but I used orange peel from a jar.  The biscuits smelled fantastic out of the oven; the flavor was subtle.  Next time I am adding more zest.

For the Earl Grey, I used Tazo brand Earl Grey.  It's milder and sweeter than Twinnings or Darvilles of Windsor and has lavender in it, a little non-traditional, but nice. The tea bags are full leaf tea, so I smashed the heck out it in the bag by pinching it and grinding it with my fingers.  I ground it up pretty fine-- and I could have ground it up a bit more.  I added most of the tea bag to a small ball of dough.  The full recipe would need 1-3 tea bags, depending on your taste.  Again, the flavor was mild. Biting into a lavender flower was a nice flavor explosion, but a reminder to grind up the tea better. I really liked the lavender flavor, though.


I took all three recipes to my office today and I didn't hear anything bad-- most of the biscuits were gone by afternoon. I think that's a good thing? 

That's it.  Let me know how yours turn out.