Spinach Artichoke Parmesan Soup

http://redefinedmom.com/slow-cooker-spinach-artichoke-parmesan-soup-recipe/#_a5y_p=4422862

Photo and recipe by Kelly at www.redefinedmom.com

Soup #7

Ok, in case you haven't noticed, there is constantly something going on in my house. I don't know what the deal is, but we absolutely cannot get it together. This soup is a metaphor for our life right now.

To backtrack, Colby had an allergy shot last week that went crazy. This was actually his second one to go crazy. For some reason all of a sudden he is having reactions to his shots. It takes a few days for the reaction to completely go away. Meanwhile, he takes Benadryl and we keep a positive attitude. And by "we", I mean ME. Colby isn't quite as positive as I am. Ha!!

Well, Friday night, Elizabeth tells me that her head is itching so bad that she is actually going a little crazy. I automatically think "lice" and then I think about the "super lice" that is in the news lately and immediately start thinking about how we are all going to look with shaved heads... I have her sit in front of me and start to go through her hair with a flashlight... it's not lice. She has some weird rash all over her head... and down her neck... and behind her ears.... and she says, "Hmm... that may be why my stomach itches," ... pulls her shirt up... She is broken out in hives. Awesome. We start back tracking on what she ate and where she has been. She convinces me to text a friend of mine that is a nurse, and after texts back and forth, I remember the acne medicine she started taking three weeks ago. Nurse Melanie does some research and finds that 1 out of 100 kids have hives after three weeks of use. I gave her a benedryl, and she just keeps getting more and more hivey... give her another benedryl. She sleeps for 12 hours. Saturday night, breaks out in hives again. Same thing. Sunday morning we go to the grocery store... hives.

Basically I need stock in Benedryl right now.

We get home from the grocery store with our big plans of making this soup and also making chicken salad for lunches this week. I pull out the crock pot and put Elizabeth completely in charge of preparing the soup while I start cutting up and boiling the chicken for the salad, doing a load of laundry, loading the dishwasher, and cleaning out a kitchen drawer that had something spilled inside of it.

In the middle of all my chores, I glance over at the crock pot Elizabeth is working on and notice the flour on top.... I ask her, "Did you read the recipe??" and she says, "Well, I was going to put all the ingredients in first, and then read it."

Oh cooking!!!

I explain (ok....exclaim... loudly) that it is very important to read the recipe before you start cooking because putting the milk in now will result in a curdled mess after 5 hours in the crock pot. Honestly, I got really annoyed, which is NOT the point of this whole fun year of soup. (Sorry Sister. *guilty mom face*) She admits that she has already poured the milk in... and the cream cheese.

I decide that maybe if I put it on the stove top instead of the crock pot it will have less of a chance of curdling... I scooped out what I could of the flour and I also pulled out the cream cheese. Move it all to the stove top.

 Elizabeth is perpetually apologizing. I told her it was fine.

"It's NOT FINE. This soup is going to taste like disease, misfortune, and the tears of the homeless starving children in Africa! It will taste like literal SADNESS." she cries. (My kids are a little dramatic.)

I really don't want this soup to be a fail. So I text my mom. Tell her the whole thing. She recommends pouring off all the liquid and starting over. While this is a great plan, I do not have any more chicken stock or evaporated milk on hand. After a few minutes she calls. "What if you drain all the liquid off, keep it and cook the soup in water. Once it is cooked, pour off the water, replace with the reserved liquid and finish cooking as directed?"

GENIUS.

So that is what we did. A five hour "easy" crock pot soup, turned into a three hour hot mess of a pain in the ass stove top soup. But all in all it wasn't horrible. Certainly not disease and misfortune horrible. The texture was a little weird, but I firmly believe that was our fault.

We served the soup with thinly sliced French bread, toasted very crisp with butter and fresh garlic and fresh parmesan on top.

Scoring:

Mom: 7 - Good flavor, weird texture.

Dad: 6 - The texture is a deal breaker.

Elizabeth: 7.5, but with the bread as a spoon, a firm 8.5. This bread is the BEST. How many slices are a serving?

Colby: 7 - it's pretty good. No tomatoes!