Corn chowder: A little crunchy, a little salty, a little sweet, a lot of warm in a bowl

What a week! Multiple deadlines; complicated and unrelated topics (I am just glad I didn't mix up marine engineering with physician documentation, or at least I hope I didn't); nonstop push, push, push to get the work out the door. I still have a deadline pending (but it's a few days away, so I am taking tonight for me--sort of, I am still waiting for an email, but we are going to pretend tonight is all for me).

But I've been a lousy mom, letting my boy run wild in the house, scatter Legos all over the place, build some enormous structure. I don't want this kind of week to be the norm; I want to do better for and with my boy this summer. I suppose this is the last summer I will be "stuck" at home with him. Next year, he'll be old enough to start attending camps, and about a minute later he'll be off to college and starting his own family.

No, I know. There's plenty of time left. It just may not always feel that way. Sometimes the weeks get away from you so much faster than you ever imagined they could.

I did get a homecooked meal on the table every night this week. (Leftovers are always a such a gift.) We still eat out way more than I would like, and that's not good for many reasons, including expense, calories, and unknown ingredients and sources. Furthermore, I just feel guilty about how inconsistent eating out a lot is with the way I want to live (no matter how much I try to eat from restaurants that use sustainable and/or local ingredients).

But it was hard this week. Partly because I was so rushed and exhausted with projects all week, and partly because our stock of chicken, pork, and bacon from Haskins Family Farm was down to nothing but some bacon ends. But I got plenty of vegetables from the farmers' market last Saturday (perhaps too many), including some corn and potatoes, which to me says corn chowder. I love corn chowder, but I only make it during the summer. That's the only time the corn in the soup retains it sweetness and crunch. And with a tiny bit of bacon to start it off, well, that only makes it a little smokier, a little saltier, a little more complex.

This soup can be made with a combination of potatoes. In fact, if you were to switch out a few of the potatoes for sweet potatoes, that wouldn't hurt at all. Nope, not at all. Also, if you like a little more heat (I do have to keep in mind the fact that my son is five), I would highly recommend chopping up a chipotle canned in adobo sauce and add some of that to the soup.

Sadly, I didn't get a picture of the soup. I was too rushed, trying to get food on the table. Next time I make it, I'll try to get one to spruce up this post a little more. In the meantime, here's the recipe.

Ingredients

• 6 slices of bacon, cut into small pieces (about an inch wide)
• 1 yellow onion, finely chopped
• 1 jalapeno, seeded, membrane removed, cut into small pieces (the membrane is where most of the heat of a jalapeno resides)
• 6 fist-sized potatoes (a mix is always fun, but use anything you have on hand), cut into about 1/2 inch dice
• kernels from 6 ears of corn (to slice it off the cob, cut off a small end piece so that you can stand it upright, then cut down the edge of the corn with your knife; the kernels will peel right off)
• 6-7 cups chicken stock 
• 1-2 cups of heavy cream (or half and half, if that's what you have and are inclined to use)
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

1. In your stock or soup pot, cook the bacon slowly, allowing as much fat to render out as possible and letting the meat get nice and brown and crispy. (Can you smell that?)
2. With a slotted spoon, pick up the nicely browned bacon bits out of the pot and set them aside in a bowl lined with paper towels for the time being. 
3. Add the onions to the bacon grease in the pan. Over medium-low heat, let the onions sweat for about 10 minutes. They should be nice and soft and "translucent," but not really brown. And they should smell amazing. 
4. Bring up the heat to about medium and add the potatoes to the pot. Let them cook for 5-10 minutes and let them get a little brown around the edges.  
5. Add the jalapenos and the stock to the pot. Add salt, pepper, and cumin to the stock. Bring the stock up to a boil and then lower the heat to a simmer. Let the potatoes cook about 10-15 minutes. 
6. Add the corn to the soup and let it cook another 10 minutes. 
7. Add the heavy cream or half and half and the reserved bacon and let the soup warm up again (about 5 minutes over medium-low heat; you never want to boil cream). Taste the soup to find out if you need any more salt or pepper and adjust accordingly. (It's not easy to correct an oversalted dish, but you may be able to add some more cream or some water if the seasoning isn't wildly off.)
8. Eat. Enjoy. Be happy. Have a nice evening with your family.   

Local food is elitist? Part II

So I knew I had more to say in response to Mark Bittman's article, "Local Food: No Elitist Plot," which I blogged about a few days ago, but it took a Saturday afternoon at the playground to work through some ideas and thoughts regarding the absurdity of calling local food elitist.

(Here's a total side note: A friend of mine asked today if "eating local" included squirrel. I'd say yes, probably; not much meat on 'em though. Maybe a stew? But I digress....)

So this idea that eating local is trendy or elitist stirred up such an angry ant's nest in my mind. But why? Why did it make me so mad?

Let me step back a little. Throughout our existence as human beings (and probably before that), most food was local. Furthermore, seasons, geography, and weather restricted the availability of ingredients. However, these limitations unleashed human creativity (if for no other reason than to stave off the boredom of eating the same dish for the sixth week in a row because that's all that's left after a long winter or dry season). All across the globe, cooks got imaginative, developing techniques to bring out new flavors in foods, tweaking textures and forms, trying new things they found in their environment--continually innovating, refining, experimenting to make the most of what they had.

Local cuisines and flavor profiles arose around the world based in large part on what foodstuffs were available. And with the Columbian Exchange new ingredients spread throughout the world--peppers bringing their heat to the far east and wheat and apples coming to the new world, redefining what local food was, yet maintaining an essential uniqueness, localness, and authenticity.

Here's the contrast: Industrial food--whether you are talking about fast food restaurants, meals in a box, frozen dinners, snacks, sodas, franchise restaurants of any stripe--promotes sameness. National and international brands of industrial foods value consistency almost above all. As a consumer, the idea is that the soda you find in Waukegan, Illinois, will taste the same as the one you find in Oahu, Hawaii.

So, is consistency bad? Well, no. I am an editor, for pete's sake, I crave consistency. But not in food. In food, it gets boring and generic.

More than boring though, consistency trains the public palate; consistency trains people to expect specific kinds of flavors and textures--most of which are nothing like the tastes and textures of home-cooked food made from seasonal ingredients. It takes away people's freedom to develop their own palates, to make their own judgments about how they think a food tastes. If the standard in taste is a fatty, salty snack with a vaguely chicken-y or cheesy flavor or a sugary, squishy-soft thing with a vaguely chocolate-y flavor, how are beets and turnips and quinoa supposed to hold their own? In other words, if a person were raised with a concept of bread as a ghastly white supersoft substance with a slightly chalky taste, how long would it take for him or her to cease to regard a loaf of home-baked, whole-wheat bread as kind of foreign?

And so millions of industrially trained palates continue to crave the same tastes and textures, with a slight tweak from time to time to keep things "interesting," themselves end up being the product of industrial food.

And it bothers me, because it comes back to this idea that people are incapable of taking care of themselves, of making things for themselves, of making decisions for themselves. We are continually sold the idea that this company can make that easier for you, can take away your concerns about this or that. We are continually trained to lack faith in ourselves. It comes back to this idea that people are just too dumb to take care of themselves. (Michael Ruhlman rails against the idea that Americans are too stupid to cook in this blog post.)

But, hey, maybe it's true. News used to be mostly facts, leaving the work of forming an opinion up to the news consumer. Now people are served prefab opinions. People used to (grow and) cook their own food. Now it's served up in boxes, cans, and freezer bags--all prefab because people can't do it for themselves. Most people used to make their own clothes and furniture--now most people are too scared to even try.

But I don't really believe people are incapable of doing and thinking for themselves. Well, to be completely honest, I don't want to believe they are incapable. I want to believe that ordinary people are capable of making their own meals; adapting to local conditions, flavors, and ingredients; developing their own palates and judgments based on real, natural, whole foods. If that belief is elitist, then I'm an elitist. Then local food is elitist.

But you know it's not. Believing people can do, make, and think for themselves is the antithesis of elitism; what it is is faith in everyperson.