Soup bowls

About sixteen months ago, our family attended a community event called Empty Bowls.  With the purchase of a donated decorated ceramic soup bowl, each individual gets a bowl of soup for lunch and takes the bowl home.  It's a fundraiser for the local food pantry and is popular in many towns.  This past fall, Robert and I were unable to attend but Andrew took Catherine and Thomas.  Because these are large, over-sized soup bowls, it can be challenging to find storage space at home.  Thomas found one that was art related and wanted to give it as a Christmas present to his beloved Godfather.  Uncle Nick was honored to receive it as a gift.  All told, we still have seven of these bowls in our home.  Earlier in the week I had located what I'm pretty sure is the EASIEST potato soup recipe EVER.  Instead of chopping potatoes, it just uses a bag of frozen home fries (some people refer to them as cubed hash browns or just diced potatoes).  Added to them in the crock pot is cream of chicken soup. chicken broth, bacon bits (don't even have to fry the bacon!!), and an hour before eating chop a block of cream cheese into little pieces and add them in.  It is served with grated cheese and bacon bits on top (and scallions, if I had remembered to get some).  It was FABULOUS!  It took about ten minutes of prep time, but was a deliciously warm dinner for us to eat on a cloudy, chilly day while watching basketball.  I decided it would be fun to dig out our big soup bowls for the evening, and we each enjoyed picking out which one we wanted for the evening.  Everyone (even Thomas) was pleased with dinner, and later in the evening I rinsed them out and we made popcorn in our fancy popcorn maker.  I absolutely cherish evenings like these!