Summer Corn Chowder and NEWS

I HAVE BIG NEWS! 

I've been blogging for about a year and a half now and loving every minute of it. One of the things I don't love is Blogger and my site design in general. So, starting this weekend I'll be MOVING to Wordpress! I am doing this with the help of Melissa of Fine Lime Designs - who is brilliant and wonderful and (most importantly) patient.

In one short week, I will have a snazzy new site with lots of convenient features - like printable recipes, pin it buttons, and an easy to navigate recipe index. I want to kick your Gen Y Foodie experience up a notch and make it easier to engage with the content here.

So I won't be posting here for the next week. :(

Where can you find me? I won't be going anywhere. Hit me up on Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest.

In the meantime, email me at genyfoodie@gmail.com and tell me what sort of features and recipes you'd like to see on the new site. I am especially interested in some challenging takeout makeovers - so shoot me your suggestions.

And now it's time for the recipe....

The first corn of the summer arrived at the farmer's market this weekend and I am so excited!! I may have gone a bit overboard buying more ears than I could carry, let alone eat in a week. Regardless, after enjoying some of this tasty sweet corn on the cob, I decided to throw poor Craig a bone and make him one of his all time favorite foods: corn chowder.

Now, I have a complicated relationship with chowder (or chowda as we Bostonians call it). I generally hate it. I ate chowder for the first time when I was 25 and waiting tables at a restaurant that had great chowder so I decided to see what all the fuss was about. I wasn't impressed. As someone who only tolerates dairy, it never seemed that great to me. Craig, on the other hand, adores chowder and will eat it all year round, non stop until he makes himself sick. He has sampled every type of chowder imaginable, even in 100 degree heat! Back at Holy Cross, he would get super excited every Friday because the dining hall would serve corn chowder for lunch.

So, given the fabulous corn, potatoes, jalepenos and herbs I found at the farmer's market this weekend, I decided to give it a whirl. You can grill, roast or boil the corn - or you can throw it in raw. I recommend roasting or grilling to add more flavor and bring out its natural sweetness.

Now, I didn't set out to make this a vegan chowder - but it sort of ended up that way! I decided not to add any cream or milk because I wanted it to be light and summery. Even without any dairy, this chowder is creamy and comforting.

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Simple Salmon

Sometimes I get so wrapped up in creating new recipes that I lose sight of why I started this website in the first place: to help busy people learn to fit healthy cooking into their lifestyles. I recently had a wonderful reminder of this mission. Liz has been my friend for more than 10 years. We were hockey teammates in college and lived together in New York right after graduation. While we were roommates, we adhered to a strict division of labor, I cooked and she cleaned. It was with Liz that I first developed my recipe for healthy chicken fingers (a dish she requests every time she comes over to my house). Well, after many years of hating/avoiding cooking, Liz has started to experiment with some of my recipes. It turns out that she's a natural.

So, for the past few weeks she and I have been exchanging tons of emails about cooking and meal planning. Having these conversations with her has really reinforced my mission with this website as a place for information, tips and general info about cooking and meal prep. Liz emailed me this week about some ideas for preparing fish. Turns out, I haven't put a lot of fish on the website, mainly because I prefer simple preparations and never thought these were "wow" enough for the site. Talking to Liz has changed my attitude about this, and so I wanted to share this simple preparation for tasty salmon with you all.

I love fish. Living in New England, I am very lucky to have access to wonderful fresh fish year round. When it comes to fish, my opinion is that simple is better. This is mainly for two reasons. First, good fresh fish can be pricey, so you don't want to ruin it with too much recipe/seasoning. And two, fresh fish is DELICIOUS - so I don't like to cover it up with a lot of stuff.

Wild salmon makes for a tasty and incredibly healthy dinner. Craig and I picked up this beautiful filet of  wild Alaskan Coho Salmon at the store this weekend, so I thought this would be a good opportunity to highlight a simple preparation for this tasty fish.

My cast iron skillet is my kitchen MVP. I use it for everything, but over the years I've learned that it is the absolute best and most precise way to prepare fresh fish perfectly. This is due to the fact that you can put the skillet in the oven. Because most types of fish are very delicate, you never want to flip it. Broiling in a skillet ensures even cooking because you broil the skillet first so that it gets super hot. This will crisp the skin of the salmon and help it to cook evenly while the rest of it broils. I have been honing this method over the past few years and it works with all varieties of fish.

I served the salmon with lemon wedges and bulgur with kale and walnuts. It was a simple and tasty meal that took approximately 20 minutes to put together.

Read more for the full recipe!
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