Corn Chowder

Katherine would take chicken noodle soup in her lunch every day if it were up to her. Here is our neighbor's attempt to add some variety. The notes are hers. I can't wait to try it.

Corn Chowder

4 cups water
2 packages of dry, dairy-free chicken noodle soup mix
1/2 C - quick cook rice (if you use regular rice, you have to cook it a lot longer)
1 Tbs - dried minced onion
4 cups of soymilk (you can use powdered soymilk)
1 can creamed corn
2 cups cut up, cooked chicken

Bring water to a boil. Add soup mix, rice & onion. Cook til noodles & rice are tender, about 20 min. Add milk, corn and chicken. Heat through stirring frequently but do not boil. This freezes well.

Soup

The new birthday lunchbox and thermos are a hit. Katherine has had soup for lunch every day so far. Her favorite kind is homemade chicken and stars, but we're going to need to branch out. What is your family's favorite soup recipe?

Homemade Chicken and Stars Soup from Comfort Foodsby Rachael Ray
(This cookbook is also the source of PicklesandDimes' favorite Chicken and Dumplings--back before Rachael started calling everything "stoup." *shudder*)

2 quarts chicken broth (sometimes I use dairy-free bouillon)
1 pound boneless, skinless chicken breast (or leftover chicken)
1 bay leaf
2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
1 medium onion, chopped
1 cup pastina pasta
ground pepper to taste (I use white pepper so the kids can't see it.)

Heat 1 quart broth to boiling, add chicken and bay leaf to pot and simmer, covered, for 8 minutes. Add vegetables to pot when you finish chopping each of them. Remove chicken after 8 minutes and place on cutting board to cool. (If using cooked chicken, I add it at the end.)

Add the second quart of broth to your pot and bring liquid to a boil. Add pasta and cook 6 minutes. Remove soup pot from heat. Dice chicken and add to soup. Season soup with pepper to taste. If soup is too thick, add up to 2 cups of water to achieve desired consistency.

This soup has converted several children to celery and/or carrot and/or onion eating. I'm just saying.

Spring Summer Soup

Because our children will eat only so many salads.


Summer Soup, adapted from Edward Harris Heth's Spring Soup

2 large potatoes, peeled and sliced
2 carrots, peeled and sliced
3 T. margarine
1 quart chicken stock or broth made from dairy-free bouillon
2 cups fresh, young greens (I use the baby salad mix that comes in our CSA box.), cut into ribbons
1 teaspoon fresh rosemary (or chervil or basil), chopped
rind and juice from half a lemon
salt and pepper

Fry the potatoes and carrots in margarine just until golden. Add the chicken stock/broth and boil until the vegetables are tender. Puree with a stick blender. Add the greens, herbs, and lemon juice and rind and simmer for 10 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve with BLTs.

Nowheymama is Not Lisa Kudrow

While the rest of you have been getting Fit on your Wiis, I've been trying out my own Nintendo Personal Trainer. Personal Trainer: Cooking for the Nintendo DS, that is. I'm sure Santa put it in my stocking thinking it would be a nice project for Katherine and me. And it is--it's been fun to find recipes using the world map, to talk about geography and the foods of different countries. But it makes me nervous to have her DS in the kitchen with us while we're measuring and stirring and cooking and spilling, and the game isn't intuitive for me yet, so I have to keep back-clicking, like, twenty times after each step. Luckily, K. chose Apple Crumble for our first recipe, which is probably the easiest one out of all of them. Whew.

Nowheymama is not Catherine Newman, Either

Have you been reading Catherine Newman's food column on Wondertime? It is excellent. It's not just a good read; she has a gift for writing recipes that use what you have in your fridge at the exact moment you are reading. Recently, she posted recipes for Dinner Beans and Corn Chowder. We have two similar recipes in our repertoire, so I thought I'd share them just for fun.

Black Beans and Corn from my friend Beth

1 can black beans
an equal amount of frozen corn kernels
1 jar of salsa

Mix together and heat.

Serve:

• over rice
• with chips
• as a side dish
• with chicken

Sometimes Beth puts chicken breasts in the mixture and poaches them in the oven and then serves it all over rice. If you use a mild salsa to make it kid friendly, you might want to serve it with some hot sauce for the adults.

Corn Chowder adapted from Guerrilla Cooking : The Survival Manual for People Who Don't Like to Cook or Don't Have Time to Cook by Mel Walsh

1 cup water
1 cup plain soymilk
1 pound frozen hash brown shreds (about 4 cups)
17 ounce can of creamed corn
1/2 cup onions, green or white, chopped
4 slices of Canadian bacon, or bacon, or leftover Christmas ham, chopped
salt and white pepper*

Put the water and milk in a large saucepan and heat just to a boil. Meanwhile, chop the onions and bacon/ham and open the creamed corn. When the water/soymilk mixture comes to a boil, add the potatoes, breaking up any large chunks. Stir for a minute, then add the rest of the ingredients and stir. Cover and simmer for about eight minutes.

* You can use black pepper, but it sure is visible floating around in the pale broth.

Tomato Soup

The kiddies have developed a liking for tomato soup, and I am happy to oblige them. If we're going to be eating it frequently, though, I want it to be homemade sometimes. Here's my first attempt.

Spicy Clear Tomato Soup (from The Fannie Farmer Cookbook, 1996 edition)

2 1/2 lbs. fresh ripe tomatoes, cut up
1 1/2 cups water
4 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, sliced
1 onion, chopped
1 green pepper, seeded and chopped
5 cloves
salt and pepper to taste
2 teaspoons sugar
2 tablespoons lemon juice

Put the tomatoes, water, celery, carrots, onion, green pepper, and cloves in a soup pot. Bring the soup to the boiling point, and reduce the heat. Add the salt, pepper, and sugar. Simmer, partially covered, for 15 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the lemon juice. Strain. Editor Marion Cunningham's note: I drain the soup into a bowl, and put the vegetables through the food processor; then I strain them again, pushing all the juice into a bowl with the back of a spoon. Correct the seasonings if necessary. Serve hot or cold.

Nowheymama notes: I used a sprinkling of ground cloves because I didn't have any whole ones. Also, I added 3-4 teaspoons of sugar instead of two to make it more palatable for the little ones. Finally, I used white pepper instead of black so I don't hear, "What are those little black things in my soup?"

Edited to add: Mama was the only one who really liked the cloves. I looked online at some similar recipes and noticed that people often substituted garlic for the cloves. I think I would try that next time.

Last of the Summer Zucchini

I love zucchini. Alas, it is almost gone. So here are a few fun ways to use it up, most of which freeze well.

From Mary Hunt's Everyday Cheapskate column, here are her recipes for zucchini brownies and zucchini curry soup. I've altered them to be dairy free, of course.

Mary Hunt's Zucchini Brownies (dairy and egg free!)

1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 1/2 cups white sugar
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
2 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa powder
1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
2 cups grated zucchini (Finely grated)
1/2 cup chopped walnuts

Frosting:
6 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder
1/4 cup dairy-free margarine
2 cups confectioners’ sugar
1/4 cup plain soy milk
1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract

Preheat oven to 350°F. Grease and flour a 9x13-inch baking pan. In a large bowl, mix together the oil, sugar and 2 teaspoons vanilla until well blended. Combine the flour, 1/2 cup cocoa, baking soda and salt. Stir into the sugar mixture. Fold in the zucchini and walnuts. Spread evenly into the prepared pan. Bake for 25 to 30 minutes until brownies spring back when touched.

To make the frosting, melt the margarine and stir in 6 tablespoons cocoa. Set aside to cool. In a medium bowl, blend together the confectioners’ sugar, soy milk and 1/2 teaspoon vanilla. Stir in the cocoa mixture. Spread over cooled brownies before cutting into squares. Yield: 24 brownies.

Nowheymama note: The brownies look a little weird, consistency wise because they have no egg in them. But they turn out just fine.

Mary Hunt's Zucchini Curry Soup

1 tablespoon dairy-free margarine
1 medium onion, chopped, about 1/2 cup
1 small clove garlic, minced
1 small carrot, shredded
2 medium zucchini, sliced or chopped, about 1 1/2 to 2 pounds
2 apples, peeled, diced
4 cups chicken broth
2 1/2 teaspoons curry powder, or to taste
salt, to taste

In a large saucepan, melt the dairy-free margarine over low heat. Sauté the onion, garlic and carrot slowly until onion begins to yellow. Add zucchini, diced apples, chicken broth and curry powder. Boil for 2 minutes.

Reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 20 minutes. Purée the hot soup by transferring to the blender in small batches. Return to the saucepan and add salt and pepper to taste. Servings: 4 to 6.

Nowheymama note: I might add more apple next time to make the soup even more kid-friendly. But the kids did eat it. Also, I just blended the soup in the pot with my immersion blender.

Have you been to the Animal, Vegetable, Miracle site? I have, and I cannot wait to get this book. (Perhaps for a birthday present....) Anyway, some of the recipes from the book are online, including one for Zucchini Chocolate Chip Cookies. Just use dairy-free margarine instead of butter and dairy-free chocolate chips, and you are all set!

Finally, the neighbor who gave me my zucchini bread recipe recommended covering the bread with foil for part of the baking time so that the top doesn't dry out. Hope that helps, Mommy Daisy!

The soup, cookies, and bread all freeze well. I haven't tried freezing the brownies yet. If I did, I would probably freeze them unfrosted and frost them after they thawed.