Sequestration Meal #289

 

At some point in my pandemic life I was going through old cookbooks and trying to find recipes I could veganize. I parted with about a dozen no-longer-useful books, but hung on to a few because I got some inspiration in them. This is the recipe for vegetarian corn chowder in What Are You Doing for Lunch (2012) with a crescent roll on the side. I think I bought the book about the same time it came out, because I was always excited by packed lunch cookbooks back then.

The book is part recipes, part ode to packing lunch, and I got more out of the ode part than the recipes, even as an omnivore. But even though I have and love my own recipe for corn chowder, I thought I'd try this one out because it seemed simple and fun.

At first I was amazed at how good it was when it was just onions and celery cooked in oil with flour and veggie broth, but then it occurred to me that I had essentially made gravy, so obviously it was good! To this the recipe has you add a can of cream style corn, a can of whole kernel corn, an itty bitty amount of sliced carrots, half and half (I used Better Half), and salt and pepper. After it's simmered a bit it's done.

This is not a soup I could see myself making a lot, because there are tastier shortcut soups, but I was glad I tried it. I have now tried a recipe from What Are You Doing for Lunch, which is a milestone of sorts. And crescent rolls are always delicious.