Vegetable ham and cheese chowder

Brrrr it's cold outside! I'm not sure where everyone is from, but today in "Sunny" California it's a cloudy 45 degrees!! So since it's chilly outside and a good chance of rain tomorrow, I thought what better than some soup or chowder. I couldn't make up my mind exactly what I wanted to make. I love the thick creaminess of chowder but I also love the various possibilities of soup.

Now picture this with me....I'm standing in front of the refrigerator door open bent over trying to see everything crammed in there. The crisper drawers are full and all of the vegetables are looking at me so pretty and vibrant. Mmmm I think to myself vegetable soup sounds so good! But that clam chowder I had last night for dinner hit the spot, thick and warm coating my insides making me feel all cozy. I start grabbing things...onion, celery, shredded carrots, and I thought hey I have some broccoli and corn in the freezer too...out they come. I am a huge carnivore and I need protein since I eat so little after surgery, so I grabbed the hunk of Jennie-O Turkey Ham.

Still not knowing exactly where I was heading with the soup/chowder I just started in with the cooking process. I do this a lot lol. I start with ingredients and just create from ,and how usually my stomach guides me. So with that in mind...let's start creating! I'm going to give you a list and best guesstimates of how much I used with everything so if you just want to skim the photos and ingredients to see if you like it you can. Bear in mind though, this recipe is very flexible and can be easily adapted to your own tastes.

Ingredients:

• 1/2 cup diced onion
• 2 celery stalks, finely chopped (I only finely chop them because I don't like crunching into them but the flavor adds to the soup so make them any size you enjoy)
• 1 1/4 cups shredded carrots (you can use diced if you want this is just what I had in the fridge)
• 1 Tablespoon minced garlic
• 2 Tablespoons butter or margarine
• 4 medium baking potatoes peeled and diced
• 5 cups of chicken broth
• 1 cup chopped broccoli florets
• 1 cup corn
• 2 packets Swanson Vegetable Flavor Boost
• 1 1/2 cups diced Jennie-O Turkey Ham
• 1 1/4 Tablespoon flour
• 1/4 cup water
• 1 cup milk
• 2 generous cups of cheese (I used colby cheese)
• Salt and pepper to taste
• 1 teaspoon granulated garlic - optional (I added this to add extra garlic flavor after cooking)

How I put it together:

In a skillet add the butter, celery, onions, and carrots. (I didn't add my carrots because they were shredded and didn't need to be cooked to tender) *The celery, onion, and carrot combination is called a MIREPOIX (meer-PWAH), just in case you see it in any other cookbooks, now you know what it is.*  When the celery, onions, and carrots are close to tender, add the garlic but don't over cook the mixture....remember it still cooks a bit more in the soup. Take off the heat and set aside.

In a large pot over medium-high heat, add the chicken broth and potatoes while the celery mixture is cooking. Bring the pot to boiling and cook until the potatoes start to become tender.

While the potatoes boil, dice your ham into any size you choose. I like to keep my vegetables, all but the broccoli, about the same size. So I diced my ham into about 1/4" pieces.

Now I used frozen broccoli so I added it shortly after the pot came to boil. Fresh broccoli cooks a bit faster and doesn't cool down the broth so you can add it a bit later. It all comes down to how crunchy you like your vegetables. I like mine with not a lot of crunch. Once the broth comes to a boil again and the potatoes and broccoli are cooked to your liking, it's time to add the other ingredients. Add the onion, celery mixture, vegetable flavor boost packets, ham, and corn.

In a small bowl, add the flour and water and mix thoroughly. This is going to be your thickening agent. Add to the pot, turn the heat up to high and bring to a boil. *Now you don't have to add this if you don't want it to have a chowder type of consistency but more liquid like soup. If you want the chowder texture but want it gluten free, then you can mash up some of the potatoes while in the pot till it is to the thickness you want. Another good way to thicken a soup and you can get more vegetable goodness, is to add mashed up cauliflower to the soup. The cauliflower works the same as mashing up the potatoes.*

Once the soup has come to a boil you will be able to see how thick it will be. *Be careful here. You may look at the soup and think at this point that it's too thin, but remember we still have cheese to add to this. That is why I didn't add more thickening agent than I did.* This is how mine looked at this point.

Turn down the heat to medium, add the milk and cheese and heat through. DO NOT boil with the milk in it, you don't want it to curdle. Salt and pepper to taste. It wasn't garlicky enough for me so I added the extra granulated garlic.

Serve and enjoy!

This is not a super heavily seasoned chowder as I wanted the flavor of the vegetables to come through. I even think fussy kids would enjoy this as well with the ham and the cheese. My husband Jim is not crazy about vegetables and he ate two big bowls of it...lol

There are so many different ways you can make this your own. By simply changing any of the ingredients like the type of broth, vegetables, meat, seasonings, or cheese. I encourage you to play around with it and find your favorite. This is why I love cooking...there are endless possibilities to almost any recipe. I hope you have enjoyed this and I hope to hear how you liked it and changed it if you did.

Oven baked potates in chicken broth

Since tonight's dinner was full of lovely savory flavors I wanted something that would accommodate the sauce from the chicken that wasn't pasta. I didn't want to do a typical mashed, baked, or riced potato, and I didn't feel rice was a good pairing for it either. So awhile ago I had seen somewhere a recipe for cooking potatoes in the oven in chicken broth. Forgive me if I don't have a link to it (but if you are reading this and it's your recipe please let me know and I will give you full credit). So I thought it would be perfect! Such a great way to get dinner on the table and cooked all at once, potatoes in the oven and chicken on the stove!

So let's gather up our ingredients...

Ingredients:

•  6 large baking potatoes peeled and washed (I used enough to fill my 8x8 dish)
• Chicken broth 14 oz can (I used 2/3s of it but should have used only half or maybe a bit less)
• 1 Tablespoon garlic or two cloves minced or smashed would work well too (I used minced garlic from a jar and used some of the juice that it's stored in)
• 3 Tablespoons butter
• salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

Preheat oven to 425 degrees F.

Place the potatoes in the baking dish so they fit in snugly but not crammed in there.

Add the garlic around the potatoes in the pan.

Season the potatoes with salt and pepper to your liking. (Hind sight I should have done this after pouring in the chicken broth, I had to re-season a bit)

Pour in the chicken broth to about half and inch up the dish (I did mine to an inch and it was too much liquid. It didn't give me the buttery baked crunchy bottoms I wanted but they were still tasty).

Top each potato with a slice of butter (use your own judgement on how much butter you like. If you're Paula Deen then honey grab the whole stick and have at it...lol)

Place uncovered in the oven and bake for 35-45 minutes depending on how big your potatoes are and how well done you like them. Fork test them at about 20 minutes and go from there. Mine I cooked for 35 minutes and the tops had a nice crust on them and the insides were fluffy and soft.

Take out of the oven and top with Parmesan or parsley for a simple touch or you can treat them like a regular baked potato. I ate mine just as they were with just an extra hint of butter...I guess I should have been more like Paula Deen when I cooked them lol.

Here is a link to the chicken I paired with them. Let me know what you think....and as always.....Enjoy!!!!