Cheddar Potato Soup

Creamy, cheesy deliciousness for any time of year!
Thanks to my friend Yvonne for the recipe (I changed a few little things, but the basic recipe came from her!).

Ingredients:

• 1.5 TBS butter or light butter spread
• 1 onion, diced
• 7-8 potatoes, cubed (skin on or off, your preference)
• 4 carrots, sliced or diced
• 1 pkg light cream cheese
• 1/2 cup light sour cream
• 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese
• salt, pepper, garlic powder to taste
• 4 slices turkey bacon
• 1 cup milk
• 2 TBS cornstarch
• 1 can of corn, optional

In a skillet saute the diced onion with the butter until onion is translucent.  Put that mixture, the potatoes, carrots, cream cheese, sour cream, shredded cheddar, and salt, pepper, garlic powder into crock pot and add 3 cups water on top.  Cook on low for 8-10 hours.

About a half hour before you want to eat the soup, cook your bacon until crispy and let cool.  Mix cornstarch into 1 cup of milk until dissolved, then pour into soup to thicken.  Add more salt, pepper, garlic powder if needed.  Allow to cook an additional 20-30 minutes.  

Crumble bacon into bits with your hands (or at least this is the easiest method I found!).  Use a potato masher to mash some of the potatoes up in the soup.

Add corn in for the last 5 minutes if desired.  My hubby didn't want corn in his so I just added it to my bowl when I served it.

Don't forget the bacon on top!

Now you may be wondering why halfway through my pictures, my soup is suddenly in a dutch oven instead of my crock pot.  Well I underestimated the amount of time the soup would need to cook in the crock pot to begin with, and thought I could just let it cook on high a few hours and it would be perfect.  Not so much.  After about 4 hours on high the potatoes were still hard and the cheese wasn't even melting completely.  So I transferred to my dutch oven for an hour on medium high heat, then added the milk and cornstarch, and cooked about a 1/2 hour more.  If you have time to babysit your dutch oven for a few hours you could definitely skip the crock pot method.  Otherwise plan on letting it cook for the entire day!