The Elder Scrolls V: Potato Soup!

Hello everyone, and welcome to my second blog post and second gaming inspired food experiment for BOSS BATTLE EATS! For today's recipe, I took inspiration from one of my favorite games of all time, with some of the best music, atmosphere, and addictive gameplay of anything I've ever played - The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. I'm not sure I need to introduce Skyrim for anyone who is even a casual gamer - but for those uninformed: The Elder Scrolls is a long running, critically acclaimed gaming franchise created by Bethesda Softworks/Game Studios in 1994. There have been 5 mainline titles within the franchise, all of which received critical and financial success, and specifically the 5th title - Skyrim - is one of the best selling and most influential games of all time. I hope this serves as proper introduction to those unfamiliar, as like I said, the inspiration for today's recipe is The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (released in 2011).

When it comes to why I chose Skyrim as the inspiration for my second week of Boss Battle Eats, it came down to me remembering just how many dishes you are capable of making within the game. There are dozens of in game recipes you can create by mixing different ingredients in a mixing pot (and which your player character to consume to raise your HP), and this gave me plenty of options to choose from in terms of what to make for my blog. So, why did I choose Potato Soup? Well, because everyone expected me to make sweet rolls, and also because potato soup is easily one of my fave foods, and yet one that I've never tried to make at home before! I got the idea to make this soup in particular from a website called https://pixelatedprovisions.com/ (and you can check out the recipe here: https://pixelatedprovisions.com/2014/01/13/skyrim-here-there-be-soups/)

While that's all well and good, I assume you're wondering what this looks like in game, and how my version of it turned out. For a change, I'll lead by saying: It turned out amazing! It was like a fireworks display went off in my mouth. So, needless to say, I was pretty happy with that. Maybe I'm getting ahead of myself though, I suppose that tends to happen when you have a spectacular culinary experience. So to reverse a bit, here is how the recipe looks like in game(prepared in game with a potato and a salt pile):

I wish the recipe was as simple as the game depicts! However, it isn't that difficult of a recipe to make at all - just a bit of prep work that takes time! In real life, the recipe is made with the following ingredients:

– 1 tbsp butter – 1 tbsp olive oil – 6 garlic cloves, minced – 1 ½ onions, diced – 2 stalks of celery, diced – ½ tsp thyme -1 tsp salt – 1 tsp pepper – 1 ½ pounds of potatoes, peeled and diced – 3 cups vegetable stock – 1 cup milk – 2 bay leaves – cheddar cheese, scallions, bacon for toppings (I chose to make it with green onions and bacon instead, unfortunately I forgot the cheese)

As I said though, it is not a very difficult recipe to put together, especially if you have made any sort of soup before. It's just a matter of adding all the ingredients to one pot (at different times), warming them up, and once all the liquids are in - bringing it to a boil and simmer. As well, since I opted to add toppings on top of my soup for extra flavor and to make it look nicer, I chopped up green onions and cooked bacon to make the dish taste even more amazing. Thankfully, even for those who may have more trouble or haven't made a soup before, the recipe cited previously does a great job with instructions and tips, and I highly recommend trying it out for yourself (the link can again be found here: https://pixelatedprovisions.com/2014/01/13/skyrim-here-there-be-soups/). To give you an idea of what the process looked like for me to create this soup, here are some pictures (my apologies, I forgot to take the pictures horizontally, so they may be placed awkwardly on the page:

Again, sorry for the horizontal pictures, I will try and remember that horizontal ones look much better on this page then vertical pictures for next time. As I said before though, I was thrilled to see how the soup turned out in the end though. And what was even better: the taste! It was exactly as good as the best potato soups I've had at restaurants in the past, and reminded me of the exact reason I fell in love with this soup in the first place! It is also a great starter soup for beginners/those interested in trying to make a soup for the first time, as it is pretty hard to mess up. Here's how my soup ended up looking with toppings in a bowl:

Mouthwatering, right? To me, the bacon and green onions were what really helped make the dish look especially appetizing, and the flavor they added was amazing to a soup that was already extremely good (and filling!). I hope anyone reading this that is interested in trying out soup making - or just trying a new soup - is inspired to do so! If you happen to try this recipe out for yourself, or any of my previous/future food experiments, I encourage you to take pictures and share them to any of Boss Battle Eats' social media pages, as I would love to see how these turn out. You can find my social medias here:

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/bossbattleeats/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BossBattleEats

Twitter: https://twitter.com/boss_eats

So, that's another successful gaming food experiment in the books! What gaming franchise and dish is next? Well, you're just gonna have to follow my pages to find out. I hope you're enjoying this project and social media campaign as much as I am, and I look forward to continuing it and seeing how the rest of my experiments go!

Thanks for visiting and reading another gaming food experiment blog at BOSS BATTLE EATS!

-Wyatt