Potato Wild Rice Soup

By Jennifer Poenix

Today we celebrated Heidi Holtan's birthday with delicious potluck lunch. As you may have read previously on this blog, I love potlucks.

Stephanie made pasta and sauce, Penny made a white cake with strawberries and wonderful cream cheese frosting, Mark brought bread, Katie brought a pistachio salad, Dan provided beverages, and Scott brought ice cream. I made soup. It seems to be the theme of this blog lately (because January is National Soup Month), so I hope you don't mind if I continue the theme.

I've made this soup quite a lot at home and a few times for KAXE stuff. People tell me they like it, but I can't take much credit for it. It's so simple. Some might say it's cheating, but not me! Here is what you need:

4 cans of cream of potato soup
1 or 2 cans of wild rice (I use the Canoe brand. It's the only brand I know of.)
Approx. 1 quart of half and half
Bacon (optional - I buy Hormel bacon pieces that come in a jar)
Shredded cheese (also optional, but seriously, you should use it)

Drain the rice. Mix it with the soup. Add enough half and half to get the consistency that you want. You can add the bacon if you want, however, if you are serving vegetarians, leave it out, and it can be added as a topping. I think the cheese works better as a topping too.

You can cook this on the stove until it gets hot, or use a crock pot. You'll want to heat for about 3 hours on low, or about 1 hour on high. Enjoy!

Potlucks are Good

By Jennifer Poenix

On Saturday night, some KAXE staff and friends gathered together to say goodbye to the StoryCorps facilitators that were here for four weeks. We had a potluck dinner at KAXE's studios.

We had a great assortment of food including venison curry, Mad Dog pizza, peach pie, and lots more. I brought a fruit salad, consisting of pineapple, green grapes, apples, bananas, and oranges mixed with peach pie filling. It's the easiest fruit salad ever (well, not if you mix a can of fruit cocktail with Cool Whip). You can use whatever fruit you want and it turns out great.

Men have a whole different way of looking at potlucks. Right before we left for the potluck Saturday night, my husband Jeff* asked me, "So, are we bringing anything?" Yes, we are. We're bringing fruit salad. It's a potluck. Sunday afternoon, I got the leftover fruit salad out of the fridge to eat with lunch. "How did we get this?" Jeff excitedly asked. "Um..I made it for the potluck," I replied. "Oh, you brought this? This was really good!"

I like potlucks because you never know what you're going to get. I guess you could say life is like a potluck. If I could choose my last meal on Earth, I would choose potluck.

*seen on the left in this photo from the 2007 Green Cheese picnic. He didn't know what we brought to that one either. Root beer cake. We brought root beer cake, which wasn't as yummy as it sounds.