Slow Cooker -Corn Chowder
It's tha first of da monnnnth....I don't get "paid" until the 5th of the month, so when this time rolls around, it is the "hunger period" - ha, not to be confused with the real hunger period in Senegal when its almost time to start harvesting again and last year's harvest has already run out. Note -this time also coincides with planting time, when everyone works their hardest outside in the hot sun in the fields, and even one year while I was their coincided with Ramadan which meant people weren't eating or drinking anything from sunup to sundown.
So now that we are all thanking the powers that be for the times when there are just scraps left in our fridge, let us further rejoice over one of my favorite cooking phenomenons -experimentation. I know, a scary thought. And the best way to experiment is to start where you feel comfortable -what food do you know best? What do you have that can be substituted to make what you have taste like what you want? (See post on slow cooker pulled pork and wingin-it slaw for further on this). Anyway, S gets upset when we have no meat left, which at this point we didn't. However, he loves creamy soups, and so do I, I love any soups. And oddly, I managed to buy bags of frozen corn, which I never otherwise eat, twice, so they have been sitting in my freezer taking up space and threatening to gather freezer burn. So -why not a corn chowder?!
I googled corn chowder recipes to see what I was dealing with and decided each was flexible enough that I could just wing it. So, I hunted through my fridge for anything living and threatening to die (read -left over scraggles of vegetables that I bought at the fifth of last month that were wilting, drying, and needed to be used -STAT.) I had to wit: a bit of a wrinkly old red pepper, some red potatoes that were sprouting buds, an onion and some celery. My sister and I had gone camping the week before so I also had two left over hot dogs. Would at least make the chowder smack of the essence of meat, which I thought would satisfy S's inner animal (it didn't, quite). (See photo below for the fixins). I chopped up all these and put them in the crock pot. Trimmed off some of my fiestily growing herbs (thyme, sage) then threw in 2 bay leaves. Salt and pepper. One problem though -every recipe online called for chicken stock and I had none -but I did have some Lipton noodle packets (thanks Kiley or Sara!) which are made with real chicken broth -!!! (albeit in a powder form) so I threw two of those in and a couple of glasses of water. Now, I have made many a soup in the crock pot, so I am familiar with how it should go. If this sort of experimentation sounds crazy to you just give it time, but soup is pretty easy. It needs salt and pepper, stock, veggies and whatever else you want to throw in there and that should taste pretty good. (Some of my friends also save all the odds and ends of their veggies in a bag in the freezer -onion ends, carrot shavings, etc. and use these to make a stock when time comes). Add some herbs and it just keeps getting better...
Anyway, I cooked it on high for 4 hours, assuming there was no "meat falling off the bone" phenomenon and so cooking it on low was not important. After the 4 hours I mixed in a cup of heavy cream (seems to often be on hand in my fridge, the French would be impressed). And voila! I had a delicious creamy corn chowder that tasted just devine. I did not have flour to make my staple rosemary bread, but S and I made a quick run to the store to buy some sourdough which held up real nice in the soup.
I was quite proud of my seat of my pants attempt. Points for modern housewivery!
Everything mixed up in the pot.
There's the potatoes, sage from my plant, and Lipton noodle soup in place of chicken stock.
The magical, the wonderful, Vidalia chopper, after having chopped up all my leftover veg.
Here is what I had to start with (plus potatoes and frozen corn). Anything is possible...