What Makes a Chowder a Chowder?

Potatoes.

Just kidding. That was what someone told me when I was telling them about this awesome Potato Chowder recipe I tried the other week.

The definition that Wikipedia gives is not as definitive. Regardless, my love of potatoes and chowder (um, fatchowder?!), remains the same.

There's a place near me that has an awesome Potato, Cheddar & Jalapeno chowder, which my friend assigned for me to recreate somehow. After a quick Google search, this recipe from a blog called Evil Shenanigans looked promising.

With the leftover potatoes from Thanksgiving (I bought 5 lbs with this in mind), and some substitutions here and there, this is what happened:

POTATOES!!!

I didn't take out bacon from the freezer ahead of time, so I had to do without this time (I know, shame on me). I also didn't have seasoned diced tomatoes from a can, but had a box of yellow cherry tomatoes, and used poblano peppers instead of jalapeno peppers. Instead of cheddar cheese, I used shredded monterey jack cheese and added corn. I also didn't have sour cream to garnish when serving (seriously, how did I even make this soup???), but at least I did have green onions!

Next time, there will be bacon, more red tomatoes, cheddar cheese and the potatoes will be boiled longer for a different textured soup. The corn stays.

From left counter clockwise: boiling potatoes & sauteing everything else; cheese & peppers;  chowder is served!; peeled potatoes

Anita Raid Your Kitchen

I have recently, and by recently I mean last night, come up with an idea for a new YouTube series. "Anita Raid Your Kitchen." Get it? Anita...I need to...ok, I'm over it (but not really)...

Apparently I love to take over my friends kitchens and figure out how to make something based on what they have - it's like an adventure! It's not my kitchen, so I don't know what is there that I can use. Come to think of it...kind of sounds like how the show "Chopped" works - except I don't make things half as amazing as what they do on the show. Then again, I'm not a professionally trained chef...I just like to eat a lot.

So last night just hanging out at my friend's house for girl's night in and the natives started getting restless...so we started investigating the fridge and freezer...when I saw the pesto sauce and frozen shrimp and vegetables, I got kind of excited and asked if I could take over. Luckily, my friends are rather laid back about this sort of thing and said they enjoy being cooked for? I suppose that is why the restaurant business is still booming. 

Alex, whom I have done this to earlier last year and featured in a Carbonara post was present as well and fully supportive of my kitchen nazi-ness and took my criticism well when I got a little bit aggressive about the frozen bacon.

Here's how it went down:

Found: Frozen Shrimp, Frozen Bacon, Frozen Peas, Frozen Corn, Frozen Broccoli, Whole Wheat Pasta, Pesto

I gave her the task of cutting off slices of the very frozen bacon...check out those guns!!!

Getting a bit territorial/aggressive about the bacon

Sautee-ing everything together - look at how colorful it is!

Dinner, is served.