There should be a single word for the anxiety you feel when you know your CSA or farmers’ market vegetables might go bad in their picturesque bowl on the counter before you get a chance to cook something delicious with them. There are two possible upshots of this feeling: one, that the vegetables do go bad, which stinks; and two, that you force yourself to cook everything up into some hodgepodge hash or curry that’s good but possibly not as off-the-charts good as that perfect eggplant/herbs/tomato would have been had you had the time to treat each vegetable like a star.
And then, when my sister’s neighbor dropped off so much fresh produce from his garden that she sent me a desperate text, and when my mother-in-law’s small garden yielded pounds of string beans just in the time we were visiting, from Saturday morning to Sunday afternoon, I realized that our urban what-do-I-do-with-this-produce anxiety (see, we need a single word), is a faint facsimile of what people with gardens or farms must experience.
If you’re a pro at this, let us know what you make to prevent any veggies from going to waste!
In the city, we choose to live on the edge, with respect to potentially rotting vegetables, by joining a CSA or allowing ourselves to overspend at the market. In the country, on the other hand, you might be the innocent victim of a neighbor’s overzealous springtime planting.
So I don’t come from a place of total vegetable-overload expertise. My apologies. Still, I can’t help but think that this soup, which turns a half dozen ears of corn into a delicate cream that you can ladle into your mouth, is an awesome solution to the problem of too much corn. Besides corn, there are just two ingredients in the soup, potatoes and Unsweetened Original Almond Breeze Almond Milk, both of which complement the corn with their sweetness and their substance. Add bacon on top and a chunk of buttered baguette on the side, and you’ve got a dinner so delicious I can promise you one thing: that you will never learn not to over-buy or over-plant. If this silky substance represents the untold third upshot of the the too-much-vegetable anxiety, I think the whole dance is worth it.
**Recipe**
“Creamy” Corn Soup with Crispy Bacon
Serves 4
Inspired by Canal House
No cream here! The end result is deliciously creamy, though. Skip the bacon if you’re vegetarian (or lazy).
Ingredients
6 ears fresh corn
1 Russet potato, peeled and chopped
4 cups Unsweetened Original Almond Breeze Almond Milk
Salt
Pepper
6 slices bacon
A few basil leaves for garnish (optional)
Shuck the corn. Break each ear in half. Standing each one vertically on a cutting board, use a serrated knife to cut off the kernels. Save the cobs.
In a pot, combine the corn, cobs, potato, almond milk, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and some freshly ground pepper. Simmer until the potatoes are soft (there’s a big range for exactly how long this will be - once the pot is boiling, figure somewhere around 10 minutes and taste ‘em as you go.) Remove and discard the corn cobs. Transfer the soup to a blender and puree. Strain back into the pot. Taste for salt, adding more if needed.
While the soup is simmering, cook the bacon until crispy in a hot frying pan or a 400°F oven. Cut each slice in half. Ladle the soup into bowls and garnish each with 3 half slices of bacon.
This post is sponsored by Almond Breeze. Thanks for supporting the sponsors that keep Big Girls, Small Kitchen delicious!
