Roasted Garlic Potato Soup

As I have said before we are soup lovers. Especially my daughter Brianna! I recently posted our favorite Loaded Baked Potato Soup (http://yumm-yumm-foodie.blogspot.com/2013/04/loaded-baked-potato-soup.html) but it is not exactly the healthiest of soups so I went searching for a healthier alternative and I found one but it needed a little tweaking so this is what I came up with. I hope you love it!

Roasted Garlic Potato Soup

Ingredients 
5 garlic bulbs
8 slices of thick cut bacon diced
1 shallot diced (you can use onion about 1 cup)
1 cup carrot diced
2 garlic cloves
2 lb. baking potato skinned and diced (6 cups)
4 cups chicken broth
1 tsp sea salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 bay leaf
1 cup 2% milk
1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
10 dashes of hot sauce to taste optional

Directions
Wrap each garlic bulb in aluminum foil and bake in oven at 350 for about an hour and let cool for 15-20 minutes. 
Separate the cloves and squeeze out the garlic pulp until you have 1/4 cup or more if you like and discard the skins.
Cook bacon in a dutch oven until crisp. 
Add shallot, carrot and minced garlic and saute for about 5 minutes.
Add potato, broth, salt, pepper, bay leaf, and hot sauce and bring to a boil.
Cover, reduce heat and simmer for 20 minutes until potatoes are tender. 
Remove bay leaf.
take garlic pulp and 2 cups of potato mixture, place into a blender or food processor and blend until smooth.
Return the puree to the pot, stir in the milk and cook over low heat until heated. 
Remove from heat and add chopped parsley. 

Enjoy!!