Potatoes, Potatoes

As I mentioned earlier this week, I bought a 10 lb. bag of potatoes and we're slowly working our way through it. There's no rush, potatoes last forever in a cool dark place. In fact, most of them are harvested once a year and then stored in warehouses. So in the summer, we're all most likely eating six month old potatoes anyway--or so I hear.

Potato celery chowder with corn. This is as easy as can be. Peel and dice four small potatoes, and run a vegetable peeler along the sides of four stalks of celery to remove the strings. Dice the celery. Put the vegetables in enough water to just barely cover them, and bring to a boil. Turn down to a simmer, add salt, pepper, a bay leaf if you want, and simmer for twenty minutes until the potatoes are soft. Cool slightly and puree in a blender, food processor, or with an immersion blender. Stir in a drained can of corn. A half teaspoon of sugar helps to bring out the flavor of the corn, and of course you can garnish with a few celery leaves. A half cup of heavy cream, creme fraiche, or even sour cream would make this soup more decadent, but I rarely feel the need to make it heavier. A few drops of good olive oil do just fine.

And who can resist hash browns? Of course, I had mine with ketchup.

And then, because the first one was a little undercooked, we made a huge one to prove that we could. Look how perfectly round it is! This is just grated potatoes thrown into a fry pan with salt and pepper. No fancy hash browns today!