Chowder, Soup or Stew ???

Today was a delightful rainy day.  Perfect for cozying up with a skein of yarn and my favorite knitting needles, which is a good thing because I had a sample I needed to knit for the class I'm teaching!!  Yes, I did get the job and am now an official knitting instructor for JoAnn Fabrics and Crafts.  Tomorrow is my first class -- if they had enough sign up - won't find that out until tomorrow morning.

So back to the rainy day -- what to have for supper -- what else but SOUP!!  One of my go-to favorites that I never go to because my children don't like it.  Oh well, once in a while won't kill them. I've had enough beans and pasta lately, so decided to go with potatoes -- another one of my children's non-favorites. 

As a kid growing up, we had potato corn chowder all the time and I loved it -- add some cornbread and you're talking total comfort food.  Well, I knew that my girls wouldn't eat only potatoes, so I had to come up with something different to add to it -- chicken takes center stage.  I just happened to have some of these in my frig.

I'm not a real true recipe follower and this one especially for my mom's chowder was all in my head, so I forged ahead with my handy dandy helper H (hoping that if she helped, maybe she would be willing to at least try a bite)

I sliced half an onion, sauteed it in some oil till translucent, added about 1/3 of a large red pepper, diced as well, let that cook and soften a little, added the chicken strips, roughly chopped, stirred it all around and then added 4 cups of water and 3 medium sized potatoes, roughly chopped, with some salt.  I'm not consistent with my potatoes, in fact, I purposely leave some of the larger, so that by the time they are cooked through, the smaller pieces have turned mushy and helped thicken my soup. 

Let that all bubble away, probably 15 minutes or so, just until the potatoes were barely fork tender, then I added a can of creamed corn and some milk.  Gave it all a good stir and then started seasoning away. I started with some celery seed, a little white pepper, and some nutmeg.  Let it cook a little more and then because of the creamed corn it seemed sweet so I added a little paprika and some dry mustard.  All the while tasting --

When I got it to my liking, it really didn't take that long, I served it up alongside some crackers and of course added some cheese cubes for the girlies.

Here's a closer view --- the only thing I would change next time is to rinse the chicken, the seasoning on them was super peppery -- it almost overpowered the mildness of the potatoes and corn.