What's for supper? Baked potato soup, and a toaster-oven tip

It's Benjamin Britten's birthday. Also Hoagy Carmichael's. I doubt they ever collaborated on anything, so I'm giving them both equal space.





Tonight's menu:

We are trying Baked Potato Soup from A Year of Slow Cooking (halving the recipe and cooking it in the 3 1/2 quart slow cooker--cream cheese was on sale this week!) [Update: Wow, I think we have a new favourite soup.  I did cut back on the cayenne pepper, though.]

with Beer Bread (sorry about the popup there),
Oranges,
and some banana cake/bread that went in the toaster oven after the beer bread was done.

(A tip for toaster-oven bakers:  the biggest dish our current toaster oven can handle is a large casserole dish.  When I'm baking anything too big for an 8-inch or 9-inch square pan, such as a banana bread recipe that normally goes in a 9 x 13-inch pan, I put it in one of the large casseroles and just let it bake longer than normal.  One caution with this: with the pan being so close to the bottom element, the bottom of the cake or bread may get a bit dark before the top gets brown, so check towards the end of baking.)