Voila-just like the picture in the magazine!

Cooking Light Cheesy Potato Soup

Every week I sit down on Sunday afternoon and plan all the meals my family will be having for dinner during the coming week, make the grocery list, before we go to the store as a family. Often we pick a magazine or cookbook to cook from for the entire week. This week looks to be a crazy one for my family (as is often the case) as I'll be taking the teens from the youth group I run to a regional  event this weekend and will be out of town Friday to Sunday as well as having as my usual Wednesday night commitment. Due to my trip, this week there were only three nights that we would be home and cooking. When I am gone, my husband usually whips up things like breakfast for dinner, sandwiches and the like. He is an amazing cook himself, but when you are serving as Mom and Dad, sometimes something has to give. My husband suggested that the current January/February Cooking Light Magazine might be the way to go this week to help us get back on track with our plan of eating healthy. I have been travelling for much of the last month and we all know how eating on the road goes, so a few healthy dishes were a welcome starting point.

We try to start each day with breakfast as a family and we eat dinner together on as many nights as possible too. Today was scheduled to be one of those nights however my husband got stuck at work until after 8:30 so it was just me and the girls. We had already planned to make Cheesy Potato Soup so I stuck to the plan instead of trying to throw something else together.  We don't eat a lot of ham in our house so I swapped out the ham for deli turkey in the mini sandwiches that Cooking Light suggested as a side instead. The soup was quick and easy to throw together-even while on my own with the girls.  I am not usually a soup person so I was a bit skeptical about how satisfied I would be but I was pleasantly surprised afterwards with how full I was. Other than the above mentioned swap the only thing this dish needed was a bit of salt as there is none called for in the recipe.  The girls aren't soup eaters so they had the mini-sandwiches with chips and fruit and were quite pleased with themselves.

I always know dinner is a success when I am looking forward to eating leftovers the following day!