Ham-Cauli Soup with Corn and Potatoes

The Occasion: Had a delicious ham and bean soup at a local bakery over the weekend and was inspired to cook some type of ham soup. Also, found cauliflower for sale at Redner's. $2.98 for the whole head.

The Recipe: Invented.

How it Went: Husband called this "phenomenal." So, I'd say it was a success.

What You Need:
Ham
Water
Bay Leaves
Cauliflower
Potatoes
Broth
Milk
Salt
Pepper
Frozen Corn
Provolone Cheese
French Fried Onions

Your Turn:
Wrap a smoked boneless ham in aluminum foil.

Place in a crock pot. Pour about half a cup of water over the ham. Toss in a few bay leaves.

Let it cook about eight hours on low.

Chop up one whole head of cauliflower and about three medium sized yellow potatoes.

Fill a large soup pot with the cauli and potatoes. Add about four cups of vegetable or chicken broth. Then remove the ham from the crock pot and dump into the soup pot the water from the crock pot. If the vegetables aren't covered, add a little more water til it nearly covers them.

Bring to a boil, and then simmer for 15-20 minutes until soft.

In the meantime, shred the ham with two forks.

When the cauli and potatoes are tender, add the ham. It will add up to about four cups of shredded ham. Add half a teaspoon of salt and about half a teaspoon of pepper.

Whisk 1 C milk with 1 T flour and pour into soup. Dump in half a bag of frozen corn, stir, and let simmer another 15-20 minutes. Taste and add more salt and pepper as needed.

Now, the key is the toppings. And like on the Penne with Basil Rosa Sauce and Bacon, it was Husband who discovered the secret ingredient that makes this recipe fabulous. The soup must be topped with a slice of provolone cheese and french fried onions.

Trust me. This is the key to this unique soup.

Enjoy for days... this recipe makes about five quarts of soup.

Improvising

This is not a recipe post. This is a moment to reflect on kitchen boldness.
I am not a superb cook. I'm not even a great cook. I might be almost a good cook. I am definitely an OK cook. However, I'm only OK because of excellent recipes. There's not a lot of inborn skill in me. However, I've improvised a few recipes recently and been mildly impressed with my success.

Potato Cauliflower Soup
I have a recipe for Potato Soup from southernfood.about.com. I've never made it. But I bought a whopping big cauliflower a few weeks ago, and after using half of it in one soup, I needed a way to use up the rest of it. So using the Potato Soup recipe as a guide, and using some potatoes in addition to the cauliflower, I made a pretty yummy Potato Cauliflower Soup.

Chicken Pork Rice and Veggie Soup
While Hurricane Sandy was gathering strength out in the Atlantic and we didn't know if or for how long we might lose power, I wanted to prepare some food we could eat during the potential outage. Since we have a gas stove, I figured we could still use it to heat food up in the event of emergency, so I thought having some ready-made soup would be good. I used leftover cooked chicken, cooked pork, most of the veggies I had in the fridge, the last of the potatoes, and a few cups of cooked rice to throw together a pretty good soup. Nothing worth relating ingredient for ingredient, but something I was proud to find quite edible, even though I used no recipe and just improvised based on what I've learned about soup.

Chocolate Chip Banana Muffins
Two browning bananas were heading to a doomed future on the counter. It was Saturday. Banana Muffins were in order. But two bananas didn't seem like enough for a whole batch of muffins or a whole loaf of bread. So I grabbed my go-to Chocolate Chip Muffin recipe, mashed in the two bananas, and baked it up. Result? Scrumptious. I guess it would be a no-brainer, to some people, but I wasn't sure you could just throw extra ingredients (especially extra "wet" ingredients) into a recipe like that. I was pleased to learn that you can.

Granola Apple Pie
One of my favorite pie recipes is called Sara's Crunchy Apple Pie. What makes it crunchy is four cups of Great Grains cereal, one of my favorite cereals. While I've always loved this pie recipe, I find that the flakes present in the cereal detract from the aesthetic nature of the pie and also become more soggy than crispy. The tasty part of adding the cereal is the granola bits, the raisins, and the nuts. So I swapped it out this time for a Cranberry Granola. It was good, but lacked a bit of flavor. Next time, I will choose a granola with more nuts, or add nuts (and possible raisins) of my own. It was definitely a step in the right direction, but still needs work.

It's exciting for me to see how, in just a tiny way, I can start to improvise recipes and create new dishes that reflect a tried and true recipe, but possess a personal flair. I'm looking forward to creating something tasty enough to share with you here!