Trials and Tribulations

As promised yesterday, today I made a new recipe from the trusty cooking light website.  My cousin said last week that he was in the mood for some corn chowder.  He makes a very good corn chowder, but it's not very healthy.  So I decided to make a healthy version for him... unfortunately he wasn't here to eat any, since he is working.  Ohwell, Jarrod and I still enjoyed it very much. 

However, it was not my best night of cooking.  First off, the recipe calls for frozen corn...well I failed to read that it should be "thawed" frozen corn.  When part of the recipe asked me to blend the corn with milk... I got frozen milk with corn.... I had to pull out my food processor to get through that, while adding extra milk.  Luckily the recipe asked for only half of the milk in the recipe to be blended, so I'm hoping I put the right amount at the end, because when I was trying to fix the corn milk, I didn't care how much milk was in there ;).  It looked very much like ice cream when I was done, but didn't taste much like ice cream ;). 

The recipe had some pretty good tricks at adding flavor and thickness to the corn chowder without the extra calories, which I very much appreciated. 

Below is a link to the recipe on the website, as well as the written version in case the link ends someday.

http://find.myrecipes.com/recipes/recipefinder.dyn?action=displayRecipe&recipe_id=10000001895917

Corn and Bacon Chowder (from Cooking Light)

Yield: 6 servings:  1 cup each

2 bacon slices
1/2 cup chopped celery, onion, and bell pepper
2 (16 ounce) packages frozen corn, THAWED and divided
2 cups 1% low fat milk, divided (I used skim milk and a splash of half and half)
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
3/4 cup (3 ounces) reduced fat shredded sharp cheddar

1. Cook bacon in a Dutch Oven or stock pot over medium heat until crisp.  Remove bacon from pan; crumble and set aside.  Add celery mixture and 1 package of THAWED corn to drippings in pan; saute 5 minutes or until vegetables are tender (I would say cook your celery mixture first until tender, then add your corn and saute... but that only be my preference because I added frozen corn, oops!)

2. Place remaining package of THAWED corn and 1 cup milk in a blender (or food processor), and process until smooth.  Add pureed mixture to vegetables in pan; stir in remaining 1 cup milk, salt, black pepper, and cheese.  Cook over medium heat (do not boil), stirring constantly (if you don't it will stick), until cheese melts. The recipe says to top each serving with the bacon, but I just added it back into the whole thing. 

Calories:  215

Not bad, huh!?  I did double the recipe and had 2 cups, it was very filling!

\
Jarrod liked it :)


Today was also WEIGH IN WEDNESDAY!  Unfortunately I did not meet my 2 lb a week goal, only lost 1.6 lbs this week, but hoping that this will be better next week! Jarrod lost 5.6 lbs this week, congratulations to him!!!! :)  I am 6 lbs away from being back at where I was last year at my most weight lost of 54 lbs.  So 7 lbs to have beat that.  I have a mini goal of losing 7 lbs by Valentine's Day!  Let's hope I can do it!  :)

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