This might be the easiest real mom recipe ev-ah! And really, really good.

This recipe came to me last year through a series of email forwards. I didn’t make it then, instead I put it away for a cold day when a crockpot full of soup would rock.

I love crockpot soup recipes..if they aren’t too complicated and don’t have too many ingredients..and this one was neither of those.

You Need:

1 lb bag of shredded hashbrowns

32 oz of chicken broth

2 cans cream of chicken soup

8 oz cream cheese

THAT”S IT!!! How easy is that??? Just throw all the ingredients in the crockpot and cook four hours on high.

Top with shredded cheese and bacon if you like.

Speaking of bacon. I hate…loathe…detest..extremely dislike frying bacon. Consequently the hubs doesn’t get to eat his all time favorite too often. But today I decided to try baking it in the oven and it turned out FAB. If you, like me, were bacon ignorant let me give you a few tips for getting crispy bacon in the oven.

Line your cookie sheets with foil and lots of it..it’s a grease-fest.

Put the bacon in a cold oven, then turn the temp to 400 degrees and walk away. When the oven temp hits 400 set your timer for 20 minutes and viola! You have perfect crispy bacon and a grease free kitchen and grease splatter free hands. It’s a brilliant way to cook bacon. I’m not going to tell the hubs about it though because really, he doesn’t need to be eating it more often than he does.

The soup was filling, warming and surprisingly low calorie. I ran the ingredients through my iPhone recipe builder and came out to 8 servings at about 150 calories a piece. Not counting the bacon and cheese.

Hubs chomped up several bowls and our dogs devoured the left over bacon, but I couldn’t get the boy to even taste the soup..but he did eat a corn bread donut and some dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets.  At least it wasn’t Spongebob Mac and Cheese again.