Corn Chowder

Here we are in what, foodwise in New York state, is considered high summer. The tomatoes and sweet corn are here, and I've been hauling home so much from the CSA each week that if the shares get any bigger I might have to invest in some sort of cart. We've started getting so much food that if we're not fully engaged in the kitchen half of it will end up going to waste because omg is it even POSSIBLE to eat this many vegetables? Seriously, I have like 3 pounds of carrots in the fridge right now.

The solution, for me, is to spend weekends in the kitchen, making masses of food that stores well, and then either eating it throughout the week or freezing it for future "I dunno, what do you wanna eat?" weeknight dinners. I've exhausted my cajun repertoire, branched into Italian stuff until that cuisine, too, ran out of steam (there is only so much tomato sauce you can chuck into the freezer), and now I'm happy it's September because it's time to start exploring soups and stews.

I started with this awesome corn chowder, which I have to confess inspired me to come back to the blog because I found it on Chowhound, which is a site I'm not a member of, and I didn't want to lose it. It's from Isa Chandra Moskowitz's Vegan With A Vengeance, which I do not own because, prior to this recipe I had poo-poo'ed her whole approach due to what I deemed an obsession with putting fake soy stuff into recipes. I understand that vegan diets can be really limited, and so I'm sure that sometimes throwing a little soy in there can make the world seem like a much less depressing place (Isa revolutionized vegan baking, for instance). And I like tofu and edamame as much as the next girl. But I didn't see the point in blowing money on a cookbook where half the recipes call for TVP or Seitan or some other specialty soy product I prefer to use sparingly, if at all. Now I might have to take a second look to see how many recipes can be easily de-soyed.

OK, anyway, without further whining.

I stuck mainly to the recipe as linked, except I put in at least twice as many carrots as the recipe called for. This is partially because I didn't know off hand how many carrots make a cup, and partially because ZOMG IM DROWNING IN CARROTS HALP1!!1! And that was awesome -- I guess, in a sense, what I really made was Corn and Carrot Chowder. I threw in a whole tupperware stock-sicle, which unfortunately I couldn't measure precisely, and then I accidentally left the soup to simmer with the lid off, so I think I ended up using at least 4 cups of stock to the recipe's three. I also replaced the quarter cup of soy milk for probably almost a cup of half and half, because I had some languishing in the fridge and also because I am evil and like making nutritious vegetable dishes bad for me. Quadruple bypass here I come! If I were little miss vegan recipe queen, I would probably say to just leave out any sort of milk altogether, because after pureeing the resulting soup looked pretty damn perfect. Or maybe you could add a little extra stock or something if you really felt the need to thin it out. You could definitely make the recipe vegan sans soy milk. I also dumped in about a tablespoon of sriracha, because, heck, why not? If I'd had miso paste, I probably would have thrown in some of that, too.

Hooray! I'm back!