HaleyI was really on a roll cooking last Tuesday, especially since all the cooking happened with the Rowdy boys underfoot. I made a huge batch of paleo pancakes for breakfast that morning. Then, with the help of James Michael, I whipped up these muffins before naptime.
After naps, we ventured outside to our back deck for popsicles and some fun in our pirate water table. I sprayed the few feet of grass surrounding the deck with a natural outdoor fogger, and also sprayed the boys down with bug repellent. Unfortunately, the mosquitos around our house seem to be resilient to any natural repellent products, and that’s really the only kind I feel safe using with the boys.
So we enjoyed 30 glorious minutes outside soaking everything in sight before JM procured a dozen mosquito bites, and I blew the whistle and declared the boys could continue their splashing fit in the mosquito-safe bathtub.
After an early bath and being stuck inside, I thought what better activity than to figure out something for dinner. Knowing our next Nature’s Garden Express box would arrive in about 36 hours, I needed to use up the last of our produce. And good thing, too, because we didn’t have many other options for dinner.
After surveying our final produce, and discovering some kielbasa in the fridge and corn in the pantry, I decided upon soup, or I guess it can be called a chowder since it contains corn and cream.
So I put the boys in the neighboring playroom and got to cooking. Only they lasted in there roughly 5 minutes, just as I was busy dicing the onion, before I heard the all-too-familiar cry of the witching hour and Beau ventured to my side and clung to my shorts for dear life. Not exactly the best timing, but I did manage to pull together this chowder full of flavor, even if I did have to take breaks every 5 minutes to tend to the boys. Sometimes you do things efficiently, and sometimes you run on Mama time. Hey, that’s life with kids.
The fact that I ate two bowls of this for dinner says a lot. We had enough leftovers for roughly three bowls for lunch the next day, so I was excited…until I spied my husband eating all.the.leftovers at 9 a.m. the next morning. The fact that I was upset about this means the chowder had to be pretty tasty 🙂
Last-Minute Chowder
(Note: Some of these ingredients were used because I had them on hand. You can substitute a yellow onion for the red onion, and regular potatoes for the yellow and purple peruvian potatoes I used.)
Ingredients:
- 3 tbsp butter
- 1 red onion, diced
- 1 shallot, minced
- 1 red bell pepper, diced
- 3 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 tbsp gluten-free all purpose flour
- 1 lb kielbasa
- 3 cups diced potatoes
- 1 can corn, drained
- 5 cups chicken broth
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1/4 cup Frank’s hot sauce
1. In dutch oven, melt butter, then saute onion, shallot and pepper on medium-high heat for roughly 10 minutes.
2. Add in garlic and kielbasa, and saute 5 to 6 more minutes, until kielbasa begins to brown.
3. Sprinkle flour over mixture and stir for 2 to 3 minutes, until it’s absorbed and starts to brown on the bottom of the pot.
4. Add in remaining ingredients and bring to boil.
5. Reduce heat, cover and simmer for 45 minutes.
It looks a little oily, and you can thank the kielbasa for that. If that kind of thing freaks you out, just cook the kielbasa separately and drain it before adding to the soup. Obviously, it didn’t bother us 🙂
