Blog review and soul food

As part of our class project, we are to review a website on a topic related to our blog. I've decided to review a blog that I have on my RSS feed: "Everyday Cookin' - The Food Blog of Darius T Williams."

Darius is a guy from Chicago who, like me, loves to cook and loves to write about it. His recipes are pretty phenomenal, I have to say. Relatively simple, and not too far out of the budgets of us poor college kids. He also posts pictures--a LOT of pictures. This is his one fault, in my opinion. The photos are of good quality, but they are almost excessive, and there are no captions for them. This makes it difficult for the reader to figure out exactly what's going on. Darius knows what he's doing in the kitchen, however, and his readership shows it--over 12,000 hits! I'd kill for that kind of publicity, let me tell you...

But, anyway...on to this week's recipe. I recently made my own cookbook by pasting recipes into a pretty little journal I got for Christmas (thanks, Mom). This recipe is a great one from this cookbook; it's my take on a family recipe for baked potato soup. I figure that with this being the dead of winter, who wouldn't want a nice warm bowl of soup to curl up with?

You will need:
1/3 cup butter
1/3 cup flour
3 1/2 cups milk
2 potatoes
1/4 cup scallions, chopped
6 strips of bacon
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup sour cream
salt and pepper

Use a fork to poke holes in the potatoes, then stick them in the microwave for 5 minutes. Turn them over, and nuke those tots for five more minutes. If they're soft, take them out, peel them, and cut them into cubes. If they're not soft yet, cook for one minute at a time until they are. Set them aside for the moment.

Cook the bacon until the pieces are nice and crispy. Wrap them in a paper towel to get rid of excess grease, then crumble them up and set aside for now.

Melt the butter in a large pot. Gradually stir in the flour until the mixture is smooth--no lumps! Slowly add the milk, stirring constantly. The soup will start to thicken. Make sure you're still on low heat, as the milk will scald if you heat it too quickly. Add the potatoes and scallions. SLOWLY bring the soup to a boil (you want it on medium-high heat, and no hotter), stirring constantly so nothing burns. Add cheese, sour cream, bacon, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir until the cheese is melted. Top with a little extra cheese and serve immediately.

Sounds good, right? Now all you need is a good movie and a comfy couch. Enjoy!