I can't get enough of this sunchoke chowder. We made another batch last night, this time substituting potatoes for the carrots since no carrots were at the market yesterday. No lemon juice in the slice water bath either, so the soup wasn't as bright tasting, but still so good and comforting. We ate about 6 to 8 servings, one little bit is left in the fridge.

We got sunchokes from the farmers' market this weekend; the lovely folks at Veenstra's Vegetables had a recipe box too, so I grabbed a page that had a bunch of ideas for using them. After reading up a bit about them, it sounds like sunchokes are very easy to maintain and propagate, so I'll consider buying extra this week and planting a small bed of them.

The flavor of a sunchoke is earthy but crisp and refreshing. It really brightens the flavor of a rich comforting soup like a chowder.

( recipe for Cheese & Sunchoke Chowder )

We've been drinking this new pizza beer lately and really like it. It's infused with lots of common pizza flavors: garlic, oregano, tomato, etc. and of course tastes awesome with pizza and pasta. Actually, I've found that it tastes good with lots of foods. Give it a try if you see it in the store, it's a local microbrew too, produced for them by Sprecher.

Don't let this crazy weather fool you, it's still soup season. Piping hot soup season to be precise. I don't have the heat pain threshold that pt has, so I made a little insulation:

Looks like it's finally going to cool down, and that means soup season is open. I got to open my birthday present early, before we left for camp this weekend, but I didn't get to use it until tonight. pinktornado got me an immersion blenders, one of the kitchen gadgets that I've been coveting for a while.

I made Vichyssoise tonight. It wasn't as good as the version at La Creperie, but I think that's because they put in way more salt than I do. I also added zucchini squash to mine. We ate it hot tonight, so I'll put it to the true test at lunch tomorrow when I have it cold.

Oh yeah, the immersion blender is a dream to use. No more scooping soup into the blender over and over again. Just dip and pulse and before you know it the soup is smooth. =)