Peanut Corn Chowder: To take Your Mind Off Stressful Things

So much stress! The Thanksgiving break is followed by the end of the semester: Frugal Son and Miss Em return to papers and finals; Mr. FS and I return to stressed-out students and lots of grading.

Then we have stress from the news. Just sticking to the financial front: a U of Chicago economist (very conservative institutional affiliation) attributes the lingering unemployment situation and other bad things to income inequality in the United States.

The most emailed article from the New York Times (now #2, behind something on vitamins) concerns a former Goldman-Sachs employee who made zillions of dollars and is now dying of brain cancer. He wrote a book counseling a common-sense approach to investing, with a mix of stocks and bonds. In index funds. Shades of John Bogle. Both Mr. FS and Frugal Son read this before I did. They marveled at the fact that the G-S employee didn't know much about personal finance: he just worked at a big money-making machine. He's now sharing what he learned since an early retirement. See below for Amazon link to the book.

And--not to mention--all the rumblings about insider trading that have been filling the Wall Street Journal.

I'm sure no one wants my opinion on all this. Instead of railing against the system (which would, no doubt, be very boring), I will share a recipe I made with some Thanksgiving stock. Frugal Son went a little wild chopping celery. Looking at the pile of neatly-cut pieces, I thought of this soup.

PEANUT CORN CHOWDER


2 tablespoons butter
1/2 cup chopped celery
1/4 cup chopped onion
1/2 cup chunky peanut butter
2 cups chicken or vegetable stock
2 cups canned corn, drained
1 cup light cream or half-and-half
Salt to taste

Melt the butter in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the chopped celery and onion and cook until tender, about 5 minutes. Remove from the heat and stir in the peanut butter until it has melted.

Return the pan to the heat and gradually stir in the stock and corn. Bring to a boil, stirring. Reduce the heat to medium-low and sim­mer, uncovered, for 10 minutes. Reduce the heat to low, add the cream or half-and-half and heat gently. Add salt to taste.

Ladle into warm bowls, garnish with celery leaves and serve.

From The Best American Recipes 1999 edited by Fran McCullough and Suzanne Hamlin (Houghton Mifflin). Originally copyrighted 1998 by Trisha Meckler and published in More White Trash Cooking (Ten Speed Press).