Chipotle Corn Chowder Recipe

This is a fantastic recipe for a soup I served at yesterday's party. I made it up as a combination of the following two recipes which I found on the internet:
- Roasted Sweet Potato, Lime and Chipotle Soup (M.S. Milliken & S. Feniger)
- Sweet Potato Chowder (Jane Kirby)

*** Chipotle Corn Chowder Recipe ***

½ red capsicum, diced
½ green capsicum, diced
1 yellow onion, peeled and quartered
2 Tbs olive oil
1 tsp coarse salt
1 tsp fresh thyme, chopped
1 tsp fresh sage, chopped
1.4 kg sweet potatoes
1¼ L chicken stock
3 canned chipotle chiles, minced
400 g canned corn, drained
500 ml cream
1 Tbs brown sugar
¼ tsp nutmeg
freshly ground black pepper to taste

Garnish
1 bunch green onions, sliced thin
fresh herbs, chopped – coriander, sage, thyme
yogurt or creme fraiche
lime wedges

Toss diced capsicum, onion, oil, salt, thyme & sage together. Roast until softened and browned, about 30 minutes. Set aside. Roast sweet potatoes whole until soft and caramelised. Remove peel (flesh will have shrunk back from the peel).

Place the sweet potato flesh in a blender or food processor along with the chipotle chiles. Add sufficient chicken stock to blend the mixture to a smooth puree. Alternatively, place in your stockpot and apply a hand blender. Stir in the remaining chicken stock, cream, corn, capsicum mixture, brown sugar, nutmeg and pepper.

Garnish with chopped herbs and a dollop or yogurt or creme fraiche, and serve with lime wedges. Optional: serve with cheese quesadillas (tortillas folded around a mixture of cheddar & mozzarella, and toasted until the cheese is melted).

Serves 4

Baby Boy Welcoming Party

Here are all the shirts created at the Baby Boy Welcoming Party yesterday. (See my Yahoo! photo album for snaps of the creative artists at work.)

Credits (left to right)
Top row: Alexander, Jacqui, Kasia, Wenda
Middle row: Nick, Melissa, Jayden, Tom
Bottom row: Jessica, Maureen, Don, Wayne, Rob/Julie, Helen

My second last day of work…

Feeling very fatigued this week. I have no idea if it’s pregnancy, caring for Anya, the cold weather or what… but considering all that, I’m in pretty good shape if a bit of fatigue is all that’s worrying me. I hope over the next month to include some exercise on the days that Anya is at Kindercraft, perhaps swimming in a heated pool. (It’s just so boring!) Exercise hopefully will help my soreness as well as the insomnia.

Baby boy continues to amaze both David and me with his range of movement. He seems to move the most when I sit in the recliner in front of the TV. This week we were watching Dr Who and I was getting more entertainment out of watching my belly jump. Usually everything stops as soon as I try to get David to feel or have a look, but this time when I said to David, “Look!” he was able to see the movement from across the room.

Where did all this come from?

On Monday, I asked Stefan (my boss), “So how was your weekend?” and he replied, “Terrible! We had vomit all weekend!” and I said, “Me too!!!” Ah, the parental life… sounds like they had it worse than we did, with their daughter throwing up in four successive beds.

This has been a crazy week: David had two job applications due today, while battling a cold virus that he caught from Anya. He stayed home with her on Monday and Tuesday. I had to deliver a training course, so couldn’t stay home with her myself. She originally started with a light cough and restless sleep last week, and on Thursday Becca (Kindercraft) discussed her cough with me, but I really thought it was not going to get any worse. Then it did… she started vomiting a little upon coughing, but it seemed like she was just coughing too hard and throwing up a little saliva. Then her appetite diminished until she was refusing all food and taking only milk, or sometimes not even milk.

Saturday night she threw up when we tried to give her some cough syrup -- she got really upset and cried so hard that she started coughing and threw up. It went all down my front, while David jumped back out of the way. I was thinking, "Where did this all come from?" since she really hadn’t eaten anything all day. By Sunday we thought she was getting better because she ate a little bread and fruit. But while sitting on the potty before bathtime, out of the blue she vomited again. Luckily I had a bath drawn and we just wiped her up a bit and got her into her bath.