Our Vegan Anniversary Dinner

So this was a weird day because of my Leukemia and the chemo,

my blood counts were extremely low and both of these dishes were a lot of work. So about halfway through cooking the Summer Corn Chowder as our main dish, I lost energy and started getting shaky. Chris said he was running late because of traffic, so I just got everything to a point that it could just simmer for a while and sat down and ate an apple and drank some water. This helped give me a second wind and I was able to finish chopping up vegetables and get the soup to it's sit and simmer point.


When Chris got home, I told him to take over the Twice Baked Spinach Artichoke Potatoes because I had already screwed them up and decided they were just going to be Spinach Artichoke mashed potatoes but I didn't have the energy to do all the mashing. 

Everything tasted really good, however, there are some things I would change. First of all, for the Corn Chowder, be careful when you cut the corn off the cobs not to cut too close to the cob, that gives the corn a tough sort of overly crunchy feel that is not pleasant to chew. Also, make sure you take all of the strings off the cob before you put them in the pot for the vegetable stock. Otherwise, it turned out very well, and was similar to the Vegetarian Corn Chowder found at Panera Bread. 

The potatoes worked perfectly as mashed potatoes. They are made with coconut cream to make them creamy, so there is a bit of a coconut flavor to them. You'd think this would ruin the dish, but it really didn't. They were still delicious. I might try a different way of making them creamy next time though. Although they were still good, I'd like to try them without the coconut flavor.

Who knows? Maybe the mashed potatoes will become a holiday side dish, and the soup will become a staple. We shall see. 

Thanks for reading!