Traveling Soup - Chicken Corn Chowder with the Barrons!

I recently spent the weekend visiting fellow IU GPhiB Shannon Barron (Cross) and her beautiful family, husband Mike and kids Libby and Cooper, in Zionsville, Indiana. It was a much needed break from work and a good excuse to go shopping! Shannon and I share a mutual love for hunting down good deals and recreating outfits we've pinned on Pinterest. In addition to shopping we had lunch at a Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives spot in Carmel called Jersey Cafe, I tried to convince Cooper that I wasn't a babysitter, and I read Libby lots of books and much to her disappointment, didn't have a sleep over in her room.

Anyway, Shannon and I (with Mike pitching in) made one of her favorite soup recipes, chicken corn chowder. Here are the ingredients: bacon (yum!), potatoes, chicken, stock, milk, corn, green chiles and cheese. Not much to it. Here's the recipe link.

First, as most soups go, we had to chop a lot of things. We used a rotisserie chicken to make that part go more quickly. I think every soup I've made so far has potatoes in it. They are my favorite vegetable!

Then the bacon was fried up in the soup pot. We added the potatoes to the pot and cooked those for awhile as well. Then went in the stock, milk, chiles, corn, spices, and bring it to a boil then simmer. Started to smell fantastic!

And here's the final product! We ended up thickening it up a bit with some flour. With a nice glass of wine, can't go wrong! It was nice and hearty to make us forget about the wind, rain and hail (?) that the evening brought. Both Mike and I definitely had second (um, maybe thirds?) before calling it a night. Super sad that I forgot to grab some to bring home when I headed back to Chicago the next day. Guess I'll just have to make some myself!

We ended the night with dessert, of course! Shannon and I both love the cupcakes from Magnolia Bakery in NYC, so I made a pit stop to the new outpost in Chicago before heading to Indy and picked up a half dozen. Wish I could have brought the banana pudding - I remember Shannon raving about it when we stopped there in NYC for my bachelorette outing. Maybe she brought some home on the plane as well? Anyway, I close with a picture of Mike, Libby and Cooper - it was the first MB cupcake for the kids! And Libby of course picked the purple one.