Dear Clam Chowder, I Own You Now. Love, Charlotte

**I will update this with pictures alter, but it's basically just pictures of stuff in a pot, and a picture of the ingredients.***

 I have a really important announcement to make:

I FOUND THE SECRET TO HOMEMADE CLAM CHOWDER. Here is the story:

            About a week ago, David’s aunt asked for my clam chowder recipe. For as much as I love to cook, I haven’t quite mastered this one yet. So I did some research, I’ve started using food.com and not so much with the AllRecipes after seeing so many recipes get 5 stars with 10,000 comments below about adjustments. These are NRBs. As in, it’s Nice Recipe BUT… I don’t want NRBs. I want good recipes.                  
 So, after some hunting, I found a unique recipe with comments WITHOUT CHANGES. I, of course, changed it a lot. I made it less potato heavy, and substituted the extra taters with some vegetables to give the impression of healthy homemade food. If only my scale could speak to me, I would tell it how healthy I’m being. THEN it would have a different opinion of me, I’m sure of it.

           
So, with some hesitation, we went for it. Sometimes when I make soups, I like to chop everything up for extra easy eating, other times I leave it chunky because I’m lazy or because I want more STUFF in my soup. This one we did somewhere in between because both David and I were working on it. I swear, a little wine and a good country Pandora station makes the food so much better at the end.

Without further ado, here it is:

Charlotte’s Now Famous Clam Chowder

Prep/Cook time: 70-90 minutes ish (but don't be scared!)

Servings: 6-ish…probly

Ingredients:

4 pieces of bacon-cut up into little pieces

1 small-ish onion chopped

3 stalks of celery chopped

2 carrots (or ¾ C of baby carrots cut up) chopped

2C cubed potatoes (We used tiny red potatoes, use whatever kind you want though. This usually measures out to 2 regular sized potatoes. Just keep the cubes small.)

1/2C white wine

1/2C heavy cream

1C milk

2 cans of clams in clam juice (they were kinda big, maybe get minced clams if big clams freak you out or bother you)

½ tsp dill

ARE YOU READY FOR THIS??????

1 CAN CONDENSED CREAM OF CELERY SOUP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! WHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA. I know. I didn’t even know that was a thing. P.S. when you open the can, it’s going to look NAAAAYASSSSSSTY. I almost didn’t add it, but then I decided to just GO FOR IT. WORTH. IT. BRO.

Salt and pepper

Directions:

1. Chop everything up. Usually I’m a proponent of preparing ingredients as you go, but you almost dump everything into this at once so just chop ahead of time.
2. In your favorite large soup pot, cook bacon until it’s sizzley and done and has attracted all the noses in your house to the kitchen.
3. Add in the onions, carrots, and celery. Mix around so that it’s all covered in bacon fat (add a little butter if it doesn’t feel like enough) and cook until the onions are transclucent.(I also added a good amount of salt and pepper here)
4. Add in Potatoes, clam JUICE and wine. Cover and let cook for 15-20 minutes until the potatoes are fork-able (or whatever consistency you are comfortable eating them at).
5. Add in the milk, cream, condensed soup, and clams. (I added more salt and pepper here because it felt bland.) Mix and let cook 30-40 minutes.
6. THAT IS IT. FOR REALS RIGHT NOW.

I can't even believe this. No extra ingredients laying around after, like 3 dishes to wash. a-mazing. I could die. So great. My next adventure will be figuring out how to make cream of celery so that we aren't using canned soup that bothers our stomachs for the rest of the night. (I mean, it was obviously 400% worth it, but I'm just saying.)

SHA-BAAAAAAMMM. CLAM CHOWDER.