Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

My hubby gets his choice of a ham, a turkey, or a roast from his work every Christmas, and I’m a fan of the ham.  Besides its salty, smoky goodness, ham is also versatile; I usually don’t even bother to serve it as a main course.  Instead, I dice it and freeze it in one cup containers, so that I can grab a couple when I’m in the mood for a ham recipe.  I haven’t gotten the whole ham take care of yet, sadly, but on Saturday I diced enough to freeze two cups and make this Chunky Cheese Soup.  Shockingly, I follow all the directions when I  make this (unless you count subbing a grind or two of my pepper grinder for however much pepper a recipe calls for, but that’s because I’m freakishly sensitive to black pepper), although I was generous with some of the amounts.  (It’s soup, after all.  I figure you’re better off heaping up the measuring cup than figuring out what to do with an extra tablespoon or two of diced celery.)

Anyway, this soup has a lovely cheesy, hammy flavor, and it’s fast, which is nice.  One recipe fed our family of five (keep in mind, our kids are young and two out of three aren’t soup fans) with enough left over for my lunch the next day; I would have doubled it, but cheesy soups don’t freeze well. I always use sharp cheddar, because that’s what I buy, and I think the flavor it brings is important.  My oldest really likes this one, and my youngest was pretty willing to eat it when I fed it to him (soup is hard when you’re two!).  My middle did better than she usually does with soup, which I’ll take.  In summation (I’m feeling formal today, apparently), it’s a relatively fast and easy soup if you’ve got ham on hand.  Give this one a try!