Disappointed with Obama Address, Infatuated With Potato Soup

Tonight at 8 PM EDT Obama gave an address about the Oil Spill which should be available on Hulu and YouTube by tomorrow. While I was impressed by his tour of our area (earlier I saw him at Pensacola's NAS giving a speech as well) and his prompt return to Washington, DC, I was not impressed by what he had to say. I know that he as a politician is not going to have a scientific strategy for how we should stop the leak and clean the ocean and land, but I was hopeful he would decide to take things into the governments hand and get more military involvement in the cleanup (after all, isn't that what the national guard is for? to protect our shores, land, and our people?) and maybe even in research for how to solve the issues at hand. But, no. He gave an eloquent speech saying absolutely nothing about what his administration was going to do other than to not "give up hope". Seriously? Because that speech kind of took away a lot of my hopes...

On a much happier note, I had a delicious cheesey potato soup and got inspired for a recipe for some vegan mashed potatoes that I might try if I ever run out of the powdered stuff.

The soup recipe can be found here online:
http://www.cooks.com/rec/view/0,161,148173-227198,00.html
(and by the way the non-vegetarian boyfriend loved it and I also ate this soup on St. Patty's Day with my friend Jane who loved it as well) We garnished it with fresh basil leaves because my plant is getting weighed down by itself in its tiny pot. It was a tasty choice. We also served it with garlic toast- which was delicious as well.

As for the vegan mashed potatoes...

Basically, I'd take the recipe from the link above, using vegetable broth/stock (I actually used 1.5 c water + a veggie bouillon cube which is a slightly cheaper way) and do everything until the part where it says to blend 1/2 the soup. Instead, I'd just blend all of it. I tasted the mixture when trying to get scraps of it off my food processor into the pot and it was delicious. I'm not totally sure if the food to liquid ratio would be quite right for mashed potatoes, but the taste is amazing. Garlic + thyme = best seasonings ever for potatoes. :)