Corn chowder

After a few weeks of utter over-indulgence, I thought I should simplify my meals a bit.  Soup seemed reasonable.  But then I realized I didn't really want to go (pardon the pun) cold turkey from my delicious rich holiday meals.  Chowder was a good compromise.  It still offers a hint of richness with cream and bacon, but they are diluted with enough broth and vegetables that you don't go into a guilt coma immediately after ingesting it.

[Ingredients, clockwise from right:  shredded pepper Jack cheese; diced onions, celery and red bell pepper; Tabasco; S&P; corn pureed into heavy cream; diced potatoes; bacon; corn.  Missing: green chiles (they were still in the can at this point), chicken broth, tomatoes]

The more I cook, the more I learn to value preparation.  It is so much easier if you have all the ingredients ready to go.  Otherwise, I find I end up over-cooking certain parts of the meal - I'm trying to chop up and seed those three tomatoes required while my meat cooks - not browns - cooks in the pan.  So recently I've been a stickler for preparing (peeling, chopping, dicing, mincing, pureeing, etc) before I even turn on a burner.

[delish!]

This is another recipe from my soup cookbook, The New Book of Soups.  Since I copied the recipe exactly, for copyright reasons I won't post it here.  You can see the ingredients above, and you know there are tons of corn chowder recipes online.  I highly recommend the book, however!  Beautiful photographs and lots of general tips on how to approach different types of soups.

See more of my soup posts here and here and here.