Weight Watchers Potato Soup

(I deleted my last post because I re-read it this morning and it came across much more bite-y than I intended. I really just needed to vent, I did and I'm done now. I'm choosing a positive and upbeat frame of mind!)

The other day, I was starving for potato soup. I had seen someone eating it on a commercial for some restaurant and I got a real "hankering" for it. (Sidebar: is hankering a real word or just a Yancosek-ism!? My family is known for making up our own words.) I didn't want a huge pot of pure carbs so I decided to see if Weight Watchers had a good recipe suggestion.

Whoa baby, they sure did.

This super is crazy easy to make and really delicious. Even Dave agreed, it didn't taste like a diet recipe at all.

Ingredients:
3 pounds of potatoes (I used Yukon Gold because I like the gold color!)
Turkey bacon
Low fat sour cream
Low fat shred ched
Chicken broth (16 oz or so)
Skim Milk
Salt/Pepper/Garlic

1. Wrap potatoes in tin foil, pierce with knife or fork a few times. Place in oven and bake for an hour. Weight Watchers wants you to roast a entire bulb of garlic at this point, but no thanks. I use Garlic Powder later on in this recipe instead.
2. While potatoes are baking, in large dutch oven, brown turkey bacon. Set bacon aside
3. Don't wash out your dutch oven! Leave all that bacony goodness in there. It's turkey bacon so it's like bacon without the guilt.
4. Once potatoes have cooled, peel them and chop them. Put them in a large mixing bowl. Mash them up! At this point, I added some garlic powder, a smidge of salt and a little pepper. I also added a "glub" of skim milk to make it easier to mash. What? Glub is a real technical cooking term. ;)
5. Transfer potatoes to dutch oven. Add chicken soup slowly. Add some, whisk the mixture. Keep adding chicken broth until you get a creamy, yet thick consistency. I added about 14 oz of broth and a couple glubs of milk. I like it creamy and it was skim milk, so no harm there either.
6. Salt, pepper and garlic to taste. Go LIGHT on the salt though! Unnecessary added water retention agent is what salt is.
7. Crumble bacon up and mix in.
8. Serve warm, with a dollop of sour cream and cheese on top.

This soup is really really really good. I loved it, Rory loved it, Dave like it a lot too. It was pretty easy to make too. It yielded about 6 bowls of soup. I served it with a grilled cheese the first night, then ate it with a salad for lunch yesterday.

You can add in any baked potato toppings that you like. Next time I make it, I'm going to add broccoli because I LOVE broccoli on top of a baked potato.

Enjoy!