Independence Meal – A meal in which ALL or most of the ingredients are grown right here on our land. Homegrown Meal Ingredients are colored GREEN.
We’re nearing the end of corn season ’round here. We picked a bunch of corn yesterday, slightly past it’s prime and a bit on the starchy side, so I made corn chowder! What follows is really more of a “method” than an exact recipe…but you’ll get the idea . . . we had this for dinner last night and it was SO GOOD!
First I got out a big soup pot, put it on the stove on medium heat and added a few tablespoons of butter (if I had thought better about it I would have used a bit of chicken schmaltz that I had been saving up from slaughtered chickens, then it would have been more authentically independent..), while the butter melted I chopped up 1 large onion and minced several cloves of garlic and added that to the butter. Frying the onion and garlic in the butter until the onion is translucent.
While the onions and garlic were frying, I took about a dozen ears of moderately starchy corn, and shucked them and cut all the kernels off the cobs and put the kernels along with any corn juices (I cut the cobs with a bowl under them so that I can catch all that sweet delicious corn juice!) in the big soup pot along with the onions and garlic that were already cooking.
Then I got out some homemade chicken broth from a couple of chickens that I killed last week. I poured that into the pot until the corn was just covered and let it all simmer on medium-low heat for about 1 1/2 hours or until the corn kernels have broken down and are real nice and tender, stirring occasionally and adding a bit more broth whenever the level got to low, keeping the corn just barely covered with broth.
Once the corn was fully cooked, I turned the heat down to a simmer and added some goat’s milk from our goats, it’s up to you how much ya wanna add…I like it real creamy so I added a whole QUART of milk that I had just miked that evening!
I continued to let that simmer, stirring occasionally, until the natural starches in the corn caused the chowder to thicken up a bit.
Then I turned off the heat and seasoned it with salt and pepper, and dished it out into bowls and topped each bowl with a bit of fresh-cut “Zavory Pepper” (a heat-less Habanero…all the fruity sweet apricot-like flavor of the Habanero but without the extreme heat, there is a little bit of heat but it is very very mild…these have quickly become some of my most favorite peppers!)
All in all, a very simple, very easy, very TASTY meal…and a great way to use up corn that’s still edible but a bit on the starchy side! 😀
Musings Of A Mountain Mama 
That soup looks so good!!
I’m sorry. I mean chowder!
Nice presentation 🙂
Oh wow I might have to grow a zavory peppers next year, I once had a traumatic experience when I got tricked into eating a habenaro and I’ve never eaten one since. I like all kinds of spicy food (provided its flavor plus heat) but have shied away from habeneros ever since.
Yes, grow them! There’s a link in the post to where you can buy the seeds, they’re a hybrid and I normally shy away from hybrids preferring to grow mostly heirloom vegetables but they are SO WORTH IT that I don’t care…hehehe 😉 ((btw, my husband, Nathan, has done that same thing to every one of his friends…tricking them into eating a habanero, because, unless you know better, they really do look pretty harmless…just the other day he was telling me of a more devilish plan, let everybody try a Zavory and then a little later on offer another “Zavory” but it actually be a habanero…ever the mischievous practical joker, he is! 😀 ))