Easiest Loaded Potato Soup Ever

Comfort food like soups... yum. We all love them!
And now with it being officially Fall, it's time to start cooking and eating these delicious foods!

Most places when it's mid October its nice and chilly with temperatures in the low 80s or 70s. Well, not in Bakersfield. October, 13th and it was a high of 95.....

But hey! Who says I can't pretend right!? So I pretended by making one of my favorite comfort foods.... Crockpot Loaded Potato Soup. Yum!

Many of you have asked for this recipe, so I thought I would go ahead and share one of my easiest, yet delicious recipes!

You have a crock pot right!? No? GO GET ONE IMMEDIATELY!

I cannot begin to tell you how much I LOVE my crock pot. 

It has saved me countless hours over a hot stovetop. 

It has saved me many hours after work with not having to cook and already having dinner ready.

Crock pots are amazing and in case you haven't noticed, I highly recommend one.

So now that I got over that rant, here is the recipe!

Loaded Potato Soup

30oz bag of frozen hash browns ( I used shredded)

28oz chicken broth

10.75oz can cream of chicken soup

8oz cream cheese, softened

Minced Onion

Ground Black Pepper

Garlic Salt

Parsley

4-6 slices of bacon, cooked and crumbled

Shredded Cheddar Cheese

The best part about this recipe is the fact that you use frozen hash browns instead of washing, peeling, and cutting potatoes. This skips the most time consuming step and tastes just as good!

Instructions

Get your Crock Pot on the low setting. 

Mix frozen hash browns (do not thaw), chicken broth (I had no chicken broth when I made this... can you believe that!? So instead, I did three cups of water and 3 tablespoons of butter and it worked out great!), Cream of Chicken Soup, Cream Cheese, Onion, Pepper, Garlic Salt, and Parsley all in the crock pot.

Now for the great part, just close the lid and let it sit for around 5 hours. Or you could put it on high and go for less hours, but I prefer a slow cook.

You can go ahead and give it a stir occasionally making sure all ingredients are combined.

When you are close to being finished get a hand held blender/mixer and give it a really good blend. This is what gives you that creamy consistency without any lumps.

And now it should be all ready! So dish some up in a bowl with shredded cheese on top with some crumbled bacon on top of that or any other toppings you would like. Serve with dinner rolls for a hearty, starchy, comfort filled yummy meal!

Try it! You won't regret it...

Enjoy!

-HW

Photo Friday: Under Pressure

Little trinkets and gadgets have always interested me. I love how mechanisms work, on the smallest level, to make bigger things work. So I always find myself gazing around the queue of Big Thunder Mountain Railroad, seeing what used to make the old iron horses and steam machines work. After all, these were once real props. They're not just thrown together. Disney bought old machines that used to be apart of mining equipment to help with the theme of their attraction.

Photo Friday: The Back...or Frontside of Castle

Sleeping Beauty's Castle is probably one of the most iconic buildings in the world. A recent statistic showed that Disneyland is the most instagrammed place in the world. So it goes without saying that this building has seen its fair share of photos taken, especially from the front. 

However, what not a lot of people know is that back when Walt Disney was in the process of building Disneyland, he and his imagineers had originally planned on having this side of the castle be the front. But, as fate would have it, the top half of the castle model they were using got flipped around by accident, and they loved it so much, they kept it, and built it as such. So, this photo's dedicated to the original front of the castle, a side of it not often appreciated. 

Photo Friday: Closing Time

Club 33 is a place revered by Disney fans. Some have been lucky enough to know a member, and were able to venture beyond that green door. Now, the club's taken a beautiful new direction, and has a new entrance. But the door still stands, tribute to its long history of exclusivity within Disneyland. 

Date Day! Chocolate Chicken, Old World Grocery's and Smoggy Views

Sometimes in life, you just need to go. Get out of town, even for a few hours, and explore new places. Enjoying the world around you for all of its beautiful glory. I've always been impressed by the ads that inspire adventure. From trekking through mountains, to surfing coast lines, to just exploring cities. This world is too amazing not to take in, and even something so simple as this last weekend was thrilling to me.

I wanted to plan the day. Hailey didn't really know what we were doing, all she knew is that we had to leave at 9:00am, the only stop she knew of was, was going to Ikea to return a shelf part (we accidentally got the wrong one).

So, we took off at nine, and headed south. Los Angeles has far more to offer in regards of things to do, places to see, etc., so we find ourselves there a lot. This time around, I was taking her to a little bit of everything. Places she's been to, places I have been to but she hasn't, and places we both haven't been to.

IKEA's got this awesome sign that promotes unfortunately not actual size hot dogs. 

We hopped on over to IKEA, returned what we needed to, wandered around, got a frame for my degree to hang up, and started to head out to our first stop.

Galco's Old World Grocery in Northeast L.A. 

A friend of mine let me in on this place not too long ago, and we HAD to check it out. 

So get this, you can make your own flavored soda! 

First, choose your level of carbonation...

Then grab any variety of flavor you want. There's so many to pick from! 

Grab a bottle cap...

And press it onto the top of your glass bottle! 

Yes, Hailey's says 'Lavender'. You read that right. 

There's more than just this aisle, and there's SO many different flavors! 

You can pick up a 12-pack, and grab any flavors you want! We got some pretty unique flavors we've never heard of. In this case we acquired a blueberry soda, a rose petal soda, and even a mint julep soda! Others are some titles you might have heard of before, such as Kickapoo Joy Juice. 

This place really is awesome, and definitely a place we're going to come back to. The owner of the store is an amazing guy, with a severe love of soda, and small companies that just don't see the light of day to the public, because Coke and Pepsi run them out of town. How do we know this? He's got his letters from Pepsi and Coke's lawyers asking him to stop selling Mexican Coke or Pepsi, because it might cause 'confusion'. 

Personally, I think it's awesome he's got these hanging up right in the heart of the store. It's a tribute to his desire to give small business soda companies a chance to stand up to the big guys and let them know they're still here and not going to go anywhere. 

After we got our sodas, we headed back across the valley to a spot Hailey hasn't been to before. 

The Griffith Observatory! 

A selfie, Mr. Einstein. 

Pendulum! 

Beautiful ceiling work. 

Big places we've never been to. 

Einstein phone home...

Soon enough, we'll be traveling down there for dinner!

But first..

Big old zoomy space thing! See nerds, this is your payoff for using a magnifying glass to look at ants and stuff. You keep on zooming, all you science kids. 

While we're at it...

Look at how cute she is! 

Boo to all you locals who want this torn down. San Franciscans don't get all butthurt about the Trolly system cloggin' up their roadways, why should you get all butthurt about a sign?

Artsy? Artsy. Or just a random photo. You decide. 

Moving on. 

Okay, so Downtown LA's architecture is cool, first off. 

Second off, my mother in law found a list of 28 junk food and drool worthy places to eat at in L.A. So, Hailey and I now have donned the challenge to eat at ALL OF THEM. Someone's gotta do it, right? Might as well be a bunch of kids with clean arteries to clog. 

This is our second stop on the list (we already had been to Diddy Riese before we found out about the list. Yea, we're that hipster).

But Jake, I can't tell what that place is! It just looks all urban and cool, and quite like a place I would love to visit! What ever is the name of said restaurant? 

CHOCO. CHICKEN. 

You read that right. ChocoChicken. This place rocks. It's chocolate fried chicken, accompanied with glorious things like a bacon biscuit, or white chocolate mashed potatoes...or DUCK FAT FRIES. Goodness gracious, this place was delicious. 

I mean, LOOK AT IT. How good does that look?! 

Well, not very good if you're vegan. But if it makes you feel better, we learned that this chicken they use here is grain fed and organically grown on a farm that doesn't have giant warehouses with little cages and all those bad dirty things they teach you at PETA-School. 

But back to this place. We absolutely loved it. It's a great menu of food choices, for a little bit higher than normal price (my sandwich above was $14), but we promise you, you  get what you pay for. 

So after this, Hailey knew we were going to see a movie, and she thought we were going to go to a AMC in the North LA area. 

Just kidding! We drove down to Downtown Disney to see Guardians of The Galaxy, and end the night inside the parks to watch the fireworks together. For some reason, on some of our LA dates, we've ended up going as a spur of the moment thing, so I figured it'd be fun to keep up that tradition. 

All of those were shot on my canon, and without a tripod. Still trying to toy around with that 50, and what looks good. 

And, to end this blog post, here's the final stop of the night, which was also the third stop on the food list! 

Pellicola Pizza. Known for their Nutella pizza! 

This spot is yet again in downtown LA, and a few blocks from the Staples Center. Gotta say, that pizza didn't disappoint. It was slightly crunchier than I expected, but still incredibly delicious, and for $3 a slice, who can argue with that? 

This place is a throwback style to vintage film stuff. They've got old theater lamps around the place, and then..

Classic movies playing on the scrim on the window of the restaurant!

Places like this really are amazing gems, and far better than any chain restaurant could ever provide in regards to quality food and great style. After getting home at 1:00am, we were worn out. We both can't wait to get down here again to try out more places on the list, and explore even more places. If I could leave you readers...if anyone is actually reading this, with one thing, it's this: get out. Go explore, and see what's around you. I know, I know. Your comfortable wake up, go to work, go eat, go home, sleep, rinse repeat life is all comfy, but please. Your life is short, and your world is small. See what you can, and find things that aren't deemed popular. Maybe you can make it a popular place by sharing your findings with everyone else. You never know. But for now, I must bid adieu, and be off to search for more places that Hailey and I can explore. 

Photo Friday: Jungle Lanterns

Jungle Cruise is always one of my favorite attractions to shoot. Since it's opening, it's literally grown into its own ecosystem. Let alone the amazing queue, the shots are limitless. After buying a 50mm lens, I had some fun with focal length on here, and this shot turned out a lot better than I originally thought! 

Disney/Pixar: Why I Love the Magic of a Mouse and Lamp

Waiting for the parade to start..

Growing up, Disney was a large part of my childhood. Between going to the theater to see the latest film, exploring Disneyland, and laying in front of the TV on Saturday mornings watching Pepper Ann and Recess, Disney was there. It was one of a few pillars in my life. The movies taught me lessons about life. I learned from Aladdin to always stay true to yourself, and if you judge a book by it's cover, you'll more often than not be wrong. Or I learned from The Little Mermaid to always pursue your dream, even if it's not what people think you need in your life. Those are a few to list, and I could go on for days, but that's besides the point.

Disney apparently is a great thing to love as a child. But as a teenager, not so much, according to some of the kids I went to high school with.

See, when I was in high school, I was sort of a floater. I was never in one specific crowd, and I moved from group to group. I never really had a place of my own, but more a place of their own that I visited. I enjoyed hanging with some of the jocks, some of the anime/emo kids, some of the preps, some of the bookworms. I was fascinated by everyone because they were all so uniquely different in their own beautiful way. But people didn't always see it so positively in return.

When kids heard that I was a huge Disney fan, went to Disneyland once or twice a month just to hang out with my friends down there, it was a bad thing to them, and they called me a variety of names. From a freak, to even questioning my sexuality, I was berated for something I loved.

It was hard. Eventually I stopped talking about it because I didn't want the grief from my peers. I didn't want to hear people calling me a freak, or gay because I liked Disney. I knew I wasn't what they said, but I believe that if people hear something negative long enough, they'll start to believe the lies as a truth.

Now that nearly four years has passed, I'm already graduated with an AA, moving onto my Bachelor's degree, married, and still enjoying the company more than ever, I learned something new yesterday as I watched a 20-minute special on Netflix about Pixar (Inside Pixar is the name, and if you get a chance, WATCH IT).

Some, if not most of the short documentary areEVER give up on what you believe in.

things I've already seen, but yet to actually visit (open them doors for me, Luxo!). But listening to John Lasseter speak about the early years of Pixar, and how he was fired from Disney for going around his boss to make a film he so passionately believed in, only to now be the CEO of Pixar, and Chief Creative Officer for Disney's Imagineering department, I learned again, just like reading so much about Walt Disney, that you can never, EVER

20-something years later, still at Disneyland. This time with my wife, doing long exposure photography.

Never give up on those dreams, because without them, where is the warmth that this world so desperately needs? Where are those happy stories that we escape to on-screen? Where would all of those be without an idea, and a dream that someone had?

I'm over being called a freak, or the logic of 'only gay guys like Disney' (football players, you know who you are, and you should be ashamed of yourself for this type of talk). Over the last four years since high school, I've learned so much about the company I one day intend and hope to work for, and I have made some amazing friends in wonderful departments who are now mentoring me and helping me fine tune details I need to iron out before I apply for my name badge at the Mouse. I'm over the negative outlook on MY dream, because I'm going to do what it takes for it to happen. I want to be apart of a team who's goal is to make stories come to life, and inspire the next generation of kids to dream just like Walt did, and just like I'm trying to do.

You can never let people get to you, no matter how hard it may be sometimes. At the end of the day, the people who are talking down to you aren't the ones who will help you anyways. They don't believe in your dream, so why let them influence it? Find the people who see things the way you do, and build each other up. Maybe someday people will realize they're wrong. If they don't, then you've still won, because your dream became a reality. 

Photo Friday: Entering The Mansion

A lot of photos I shoot are at Disneyland. It's my favorite place to shoot, because you can hardly ever look at something the same way twice. This was shot while hanging out with a good friend of mine, while closing out the parks. Both of us were running around New Orleans Square taking photos of the empty park. This was shot off the new 50mm lens Hailey and I bought. It's a lot trickier to use at first, because it's a fixed lens, and you have to walk around more to set your shots up, over relying on the zoom.