Cheesy Pepper Jack Potato Chowder

The weather here this week has been glorious. Cool and rainy all week. Love it. I love fall. So, with this lovely fall type weather, I decided it would be the perfect time to try a soup recipe. (Unfortunately, it's supposed to heat up again next week. Boo....) When I told Husband what was for dinner tonight, he said, "So basically, potato soup." Sigh...

Anyway, this recipe starts out with bacon. Always a good place to start. The key here though, is to not get distracted dicing your celery and shallot so that you burn the bacon like I did. So I salvaged what I could, but it wasn't much.

After smacking yourself for burning the bacon, continue on with the recipe and cook your celery and shallot. Yes, I know the recipe calls for 2 cloves of garlic. I'll go on record here now and say I do not like garlic. Nope. At least, when I can notice it in a dish. So I didn't add them. It wouldn't make much sense for me to buy a bulb of fresh garlic, as I know I would not use it. So I sprinkled in a bit of garlic powder to make up for it.

After your veggies have softened, add the rest of the ingredients-except the cheese. This really is a fast soup. Bonus!

Once the soup has thickened, go ahead and add the cheese slowly so it can melt.

After the cheese is all melted, you're good to go. Unfortunately, I couldn't make my pictures of the soup look as pretty as the ones from the original blogger.

Regardless of how not pretty it looked, it was really good! I'm excited to try this recipe again and not burn the bacon. :P I'd give the recipe 3 stars, with potential to easily make it up to 4 when tried again with correctly cooked bacon. Husband says the same.