Spicy Sunday

I did indeed make chocolate bread to offset the spicy soup. Actually, I made chocolate muffins with mint chocolate chunks in them. While I was baking, I contemplated the difference between a muffin and cupcake. I came up with two conclusions. The first is that a muffin is more like bread and less like cake because it doesn't have as many eggs or as much sugar. And the other difference is if you call it a muffin, you can eat it for breakfast, even if twelve of them have an entire bar of chocolate and almost a stick of butter in them. Whoever started calling these muffins is a genius!

It was a very quiet Sunday Soup and for once we gathered in the living room near the fire, instead of crowding around our tiny table in our small kitchen. It was nice and cozy. Both Steve O. and Ken are big time spicy food fans, so they were thrilled with the soup. Actually, even Carol who doesn't like spice that much, and me and the The Southerner who like it but have a moderate level of tolerance (compared to Steve and Ken) thought the soup was one of the best ones yet. Of course, I say that most weeks...maybe I'm getting better and better at this soup thing!

Just in case you want to add a little warmth to your winter evening...
This makes a lot of soup...about 6 quarts. Here's the recipe :
Spicy Cream of Corn Soup - original recipe
10 cups homemade vegetable stock
10 cups frozen corn (divided 8 cups & 2 cups)
2 large onions, chopped
2 TBS corn oil
2 chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (you can find these in most Mexican food section)
2 tsp of adobo sauce
2 8oz bricks of cream cheese, cut into one inch squares
2 cups soy milk (or regular milk, if you like)
salt to taste

Saute the onions in corn oil until soft. Add 8 cups of corn, diced peppers (seeded!) and adobo sauce. Saute 2 more minutes. Add vegetable stock. Let simmer for 20 minutes or so. Puree with a hand blender (or a regular blender, but cool slightly before doing that). Pour soup through a sieve to remove all the corn skins (?) and return to stock pot. Add soy milk and cream cheese. The cream cheese will soften but you'll probably have to hit it with the hand blender or whisk it by hand to make it smooth. Add remaining two cups of corn. Heat through. Season with salt as needed.

Just a note...you can freeze the rest of the peppers (there are usually about 5-6 per can and about 1/8 cup of sauce) in their sauce for a long time.

So anyway, I hope you all like the new blog. I'm really happy with the way it looks! And thanks for stopping by!!!