there are days when I LOVE to cook and there's other days where I'm pulling my hair...since I had to do so much in the kitchen last week with family visiting, I've got stuff in the frig that screamed to be used up & gone!  So, for all of those folks who keep asking how I make my soups, here's the quick, down & dirty tutorial!  Keep in mind that I used mostly  fresh ingredients & some organic ingredients only because I happened to have them...I know that with working women, the schedule doesn't always allow for stops at the farmers market so by all means, SUBSTITUTE!  But this is the gist of it:

INGREDIENTS: 

• VEGGIES ( I happened to have Yukon gold potatoes (and I do leave the skin on my potatoes), corn that I had from market-when I saw we wouldn't eat all of them, I blanched them whole on the cob so I could use later, you can certainly add a full can of canned no-salt corn), yellow pepper (OR you can use green, red, yellow, orange)...celery, shallots, onion
• flour
• stock (your choice-veggie, chicken, you can even use water)
• seasonings ( I tend to use Old Bay cause I'm addicted to it) and I used celery salt-I do not use plain salt cause trust me, there's already enough salt in Old Bay & in the CS-my hands would look like Oopma Loopas
• half & half or cream (lite or heavy) to thicken
• garlic (fresh or jarred) -I showed that I have both and used both to keep vampires away!
• oil & butter (I was out of butter but I used my Earth Balance with no problem)