Two Soups For A Pool Party

The fitness boot camp (BrownsBootCamp.com) my son Tommy and I have been attending for the last 14 months is having a pool party tomorrow to celebrate the completion of August's classes. I'm bringing two soups for the crowd. One is Jalapeno & Cilantro and the other is Potato & Swiss Cheese. I found these recipes while Googling for Sweet Tomatoes/SoupPlantation soup recipes. Naturally, with my short attention span and the nature of roaming the internet I never finished looking for the recipe I started out looking for but came across a nice recipe site called CopyKat.com, check it out. Lots of recipes not just soup.

So, this pool party will be my first foray into a larger offering of my soups. I've got a long term plan for doing something serious with my soups but I'm not quite ready to share my ideas with a larger audience yet. One of the steps in my plan is to move into providing soups to small parties and gatherings first. I provide the soup and bread you provide the wine and other beverages for an informal get together. Anyway, I wish I had some business cards ready to go but I'm not quite there yet. I'll go with my usual table tent of ingredients, name and I'll put my blog URL on there for the first time.

The Jalapeno & Cilantro looks pretty easy to prepare. Saute diced jalapenos and Spanish onion. Add a diced avocado and 16 oz. of diced tomatoes and their juice. Bring that mixture to a boil. Add 8 cups of cream, salt, black pepper & white pepper to taste and 1/2 teaspoon finely diced garlic. Reduce over a happy simmer by 25 percent. This yields about 8 cups. Adjust seasonings and add 1/2 bunch of chopped cilantro. Note on the garlic: I've mentioned before that I take a shortcut with the chopped garlic. I use already chopped garlic I find in our grocery's produce section. The brand I like best is Spice World minced garlic. Between peeling all the garlic cloves and then chopping enough for some of the recipes I make this is a real time and effort saver.

The Potato & Swiss Cheese looks even easier than the Jalapeno & Cilantro soup. Start off with 64 oz. of chicken broth, 2 pounds of yukon gold potatoes sliced thin (unpeeled) and 1 yellow onion sliced thin. Cook those 3 ingredients on medium for about 20 minutes or until potatoes are tender. Add 1 quart of cream, 1 cup of shredded swiss cheese, 1/2 cup of grated Parmesan cheese, 1/4 cup of real bacon bits and 2 tablespoons of diced green onions and simmer for 20 minutes. The recipe didn't state how many servings you get from this but I'm guessing about 8. For grated Parmesan cheese I go for Trader Joe's brand. Their Parmesan-Romano mix is my favorite.

Well off to do some shopping for these two soups.