Cheeseburger Soup

http://therecipecritic.com/2012/12/cheeseburger-soup/

Photo and recipe courtesy of Alyssa at The Recipe Critic

Well, a few weeks ago, Marty had a accident with a saw. Since his Serious Thumb Injury, he has been on medical leave from the fire department. Let me tell you something: I have always "joked" that the reason we have made it to nearly 21 years of marriage is a lot of laughter and love and a whole crap-ton of "My job takes me away for 24 hours of every 72". So his being home 7 days a week was quaint and lovely for about 8 minutes. After a handful of weeks, he is annoyed with me being mean and I am annoyed with his snoring and our house is shrinking like in those weird dreams you have when you are on cold medicine. Truth be told, (if you haven't already guessed) Marty is a whole lot nicer and sweeter than I am. So he decided to stay with a friend on Saturday night and I decided that would be a great time to rest and read and... wait never mind... paint the kitchen. What was I thinking?

Painting your kitchen. It takes more math than I was aware of when I came up with this diabolical plan. Basically, take the amount of paint you think you need and multiply that by 2. Then take the number of hours you think it will take you to paint the kitchen, and you really need to multiply that by 4. Take the number of rolls of paper towels you think you will use to wipe up the spatters and multiply that by a case. Then take the height of your ceiling from the floor and add one foot, and that is how tall you need to be to paint. Also, refrigerators are super heavy. Basically, Marty came home Sunday to one really pretty wall, two that needed another coat, and the walls on top of the cabinets and behind the refrigerator untouched. WELCOME HOME!! I LOVE YOU!

So that project will be finished another day.

Meanwhile, on Sunday we decided to make a soup. We didn't want to go to the store (again) so we looked around on my Pinterest to see what we could make with ingredients we already had. Thus, Cheeseburger Soup.

The whole time we are preparing this, Elizabeth is being negative. "I have never seen a cheeseburger with carrots." "This is going to be the weirdest thing." "Potatoes? In cheeseburger soup?" "Are the potatoes going to turn into fries?" "Should we MAKE fries?"

But once it was finished? It tasted very weirdly like a cheeseburger. I even chopped up pickles in mine, which totally grossed the anti-pickle-children out.

Scoring:

Elizabeth: 8   I love this soup! It's amazing!!

Mom: 6. It does taste like a cheeseburger. But a really bland cheeseburger. The pickles helped, but it needs... something. It's a happy meal burger, in liquid form.

Colby: 8   This is really good! I really like it.

Marty: (unscored) He tried one bite, said, "I'm not really sure about this. I can't even give it a number."

So basically, I am thinking this is a really good soup for the kids, but the parents might need a date night. :)