Fall Harvest Corn Chowder

I've heard that there are some people who surf the web to watch porn.  You know; stuff like sex videos.  And because my appetite leans towards food and less to carnal temptations I surf the web to watch food videos.  

Recently, I watched a Jacques Pépin tutorial on preparing a corn chowder.  I was intrigued by the ease he denuded a cob of it's kernels without sending them flying all over the kitchen for the dog to chase.  It's all about keeping your knife on both a horizontal level while at the same time a horizontal angle.  Who knew?  In any event, I found a New York Times recipe in my digital cooking index and short of sourcing some fresh sweet corn I had everything else on hand including some extras.  Sunday morning I fetched a half-dozen beautiful ears of sweet corn from Wienke's Market over on County S.  Besides, Packer Football is always better at halftime over a bowl of soup; notwithstanding a loss to the Vikings.

Individualizing a chowder or soup is a simple matter; consequently I incorporated chopped celery (including the tops) in lieu of parsley along with a cup of locally-sourced chopped oyster mushrooms I had on hand.  And smoked bacon.  Why, you ask?  Because I always have Marchant's bacon in the freezer in the event of an emergency.  Make it your own!________________________________________________________________________  

Basic Corn Chowder

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Mark Bittman  Updated July 2, 2024

Total Time 30 minutes    Yield  4 servings

This is chowder at its simplest: corn, onion, potatoes and milk, with a couple of chopped
tomatoes and a handful of parsley to add flavor and color. Starting with bacon and finishing with cream makes a richer version of the dish. But you could easily expand its borders by adding curry powder and ginger, sour cream and cilantro. Or when the potato is replaced by rice and the cream with coconut milk, Southeast Asian seasonings can be added to make a chowder that has little in common with the original, save for its intense corn flavor.

Ingredients

● 4 to 6 ears of corn
● 1 tablespoon butter or neutral oil, like canola or grapeseed
● 1 medium onion, chopped
● 2 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
● Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
● 2 tomatoes, cored, seeded and chopped (optional)
● 1 cup whole or low-fat milk
● ½ cup chopped parsley (optional)

Preparation

1. Shuck corn, and use a paring knife to strip kernels into a bowl. Put cobs in a pot with 4
cups water; bring to a boil, cover and simmer while you continue.  The corn water constitutes your stock.

2. Put butter or oil, I had residual bacon drippings (hubba hubba) in a saucepan, and turn heat to medium-high. When butter melts or oil is hot, add onion and potatoes, along with a sprinkling of salt and pepper. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onion softens, about 5 minutes; add tomatoes and cook, stirring, for another minute or two.

3. After corncobs have cooked at least 45 minutes, strain liquid into onion-potato mixture;
bring to a boil, then lower heat to a simmer. When potatoes are tender, add corn kernels
and milk, and heat through. Taste, and adjust seasonings. Garnish with the parsley, and
serve.

Pro Tip

I added the oyster mushrooms along with some flour to make a roux at Step 1, the celery at Step 3 along with crispy chopped bacon bits as a garnish before serving.  

For a South Asian flair try curried corn chowder:  In Step 2, use oil, and add 1 tablespoon each curry powder and peeled and minced ginger to the onions. In Step 3, use sour cream in place of milk; garnish with cilantro in place of parsley.  Make it your own!

Autumn Is Knocking On The Door

The other day we rose to a sunny, blue-sky, 62F morning.  Perfect weather to walk the dog.

There's a lot of native flowers putting on a show and keeping the pollinators occupied.  Bumble bees everywhere and in short order lost count of the number of Monarch butterflies teasing me for a photo opportunity.

I had to settle for flowers...

Sneeze Weed (Helenium autumnale)

Obedient Plant (Physostegia virginiana)

Great Blue Lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica)

New England aster (Symphyotrichum novae-angliae) 

Mountain mint (Pycnanthemum) on the left and Canada Goldenrod (Solidago canadensis) 

 

Deficits, Debts and a Ticking Bond Bomb

A not-so-funny thing happened on the way to the accountant: by the end of August, gross federal debt had topped $40 trillion, reaching roughly $40.2 trillion—considerably sooner than many forecasts had anticipated.

The reasons are familiar: tax cuts and other provisions in the One Big Beautiful Bill, the escalating and largely unbudgeted costs of Mr. Trump's war in the Middle East, and the potential need to refund roughly $166 billion in tariffs collected under an authority the Supreme Court ruled the president did not possess. The Court's decision specifically concerned tariffs imposed under IEEPA; it did not eliminate the president's other statutory tariff authorities.

Because the debt is growing and the statutory borrowing limit is $41.1 trillion, forecasters expect Treasury to run into the ceiling sometime in 2027—potentially as early as late winter. Exactly when that happens is uncertain, and hitting the ceiling is not the same thing as immediately defaulting; Treasury has extraordinary measures available once the limit is reached.

The last major bipartisan effort of this sort was the Simpson-Bowles Commission in 2010. Its plan came within three votes of the 14 needed to send it forward to Congress for consideration. Sixteen years later, no comparable comprehensive effort has taken place.

There are plenty of theories, but I should think that because tackling this issue would require difficult choices about Social Security, Medicare, defense and taxes, nobody—from the President on down the line—has the cojones to take it on.

Consequently, net interest costs are now roughly $1 trillion a year—money going to service prior borrowing rather than being available for other priorities. We are financing the financing. And before too long, the chickens will come home to roost.

Treasury Secretary Bessent has had his hands full with the 10-year U.S. Treasury bond yield reaching levels not seen in years. Japan's 10-year bond has also risen sharply, while German, French and UK bond yields have climbed. Seems plenty of countries share the problem of higher borrowing costs amid elevated debt, inflation and other fiscal pressures.

In a fit of pique, Mr. Trump continues to pressure the Fed chairman to lower interest rates. In a social media post following the August jobs report, the president said he would stop trading with countries with which the United States has a trade deficit if the Fed doesn't lower interest rates. That's a head-scratcher, eh?

At the G-20 finance meeting last week, Bessent suggested that the world is “awash in debt” and that the only way out is to “grow our way out.”

But as I pointed out in the first two paragraphs, the existing debt and additional borrowing under Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill make economic growth alone an exceedingly difficult solution for the U.S. and other highly indebted economies.

The national debt is skyrocketing under Trump 2.0, as it did during his first term. The important point isn't assigning the entire debt to one president; it's that the fiscal trajectory remains upward, with large structural deficits adding to the accumulated debt.

Meanwhile, last week Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced that his department would increase its purchases of longer-term Treasury securities as part of its buyback program. Treasury describes the program primarily as a way to improve liquidity in the longer-dated bond market. Theoretically, buying bonds reduces the supply available to investors, pushing their prices higher and their yields lower.

The market shrugged.

The 10-year Treasury yield rose, while longer-term yields remained elevated. The 30-year yield subsequently moved above 5.3 percent as the global bond sell-off intensified.

Some days I think that, like Mr. Trump, Scott Bessent thinks he's smarter than the rest of us. While Trump may have bamboozled a sufficiently large enough chunk of the electorate, Bessent will have a tougher time of it putting one over on the bond market.

Here's what I think the markets see:

This administration lacks the basic competence to manage its own affairs, including finances. Long-standing alliances disrupted. Tariffs applied and withdrawn on a whim. Bullying prestigious colleges, universities, technical publications and the press. Threats made regarding Greenland and Canada, attacks on Venezuela and Cuba.  And Mr. Trump's war in the Middle East, which has set in motion a cascade of destabilizing events with all manner of consequences for global stability, security, energy prices and the world economy.

Yet there are vanity projects like a ballroom, an airborne Qatari palace, a reflecting-pool fiasco and a triumphal arch.

That's what I think the market sees.

 

Friday Morning Remembrance

Twenty five years ago I was driving to the office listening to WHAD’s Tom Clark interview someone in New York City.  The interview was punctuated by the interviewee in New York noting that first responders had been dispatched following initial reports of a small plane crashing into one of the World Trade Center towers.  

Arriving at the day job I found Mike had live coverage of the smoking tower on the television in his office. Details were sketchy.  As we speculated upon the crazy notion of how someone could possibly fly into a skyscraper a second plane crashed into the other tower - a commercial airliner.  We knew then that it was no small aircraft that struck the first.  That tower collapsed and we watched until the second structure fell. 

Four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks were carried out by al-Qaeda on that day.  So as we reflect-upon the solemnity of this anniversary let us not forget that that 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudi Arabia citizens.  Dozens of well-connected Saudis had fled the United States on chartered flights in the days after 9/11.  The House of Saud is a notoriously loathsome collection of individuals.  The gruesome murder and dismemberment of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi is further evidence of its odious persistence. 

As far back as the early 1980s I enjoyed multiple opportunities to tour the towers. This photo was snapped on the observation deck. I have some photos of Connie Chung doing a live broadcast from the CNN studio.  I’ve even dined at the 107th floor Windows on the World restaurant.  

That day, two and a half decades-ago, was a seriously bad day.  Strange how all of the details remain so fresh in the present day.  My Pearl Harbor life event I suppose.

Ask if you would include the Saudi royal family among your friends.....

Framboise Rouge

In the foreground is our raspberry patch.  

It’s not very large and the variety(s) of raspberries we planted decades ago is lost to history.  Most springs I prune and remove any dead canes and give it a good fertilizer drench formulated specifically for raspberries.  While it is hardly neglected it doesn't receive the level of attention a commercial raspberry grower would give it such as tidy straight rows, diligent weeding and a trellis.  We have an old school briar patch.  This year I was worried that our modest berry patch might have been done-in.  Finis.

Over winter the rabbits (or some other critter) chomped every single live plant down to ground level.  I had to remove only a handful of dead canes and there wasn't much to observe above ground.  Nevertheless, I fertilized it and crossed my fingers.  And as it warmed-up, sure enough, raspberry leaves emerged from the ground and plants began to grow.  So I fertilized it again; and a month later fertilized it a third time for good measure.  I even went in there with a string trimmer and cleared as much of the grass and weeds as I could taking pains to avoid cutting any of the raspberries.

And in the last week the berries began to ripen.  And there are a lot of them.  The dog and I go out to the patch nearly every day to pick berries; and it looks like we're gonna be busy for a while.  On a good day I estimate we'll gather almost a pint.  Doggo is fond of eating the low-hanging fruit and I pick the rest.  And eat some along the way.  Consequently, we've got seasonal raspberries for table fare.  Given the cost of diesel to get raspberries to the produce department of a local grocery nowadays, these gems are worth their weight in gold.

 

And we're freezing them for a wintertime treat.  You haven't lived until you've had one of Jill's smoothies made with Greek yogurt, local honey and our own frozen raspberries.   

The Golden Hour

 

Google Photo periodically furnishes unsolicited photo vignettes using their AI platform.  Like these brief, fleeting, moments associated with the rising and setting of the sun.

Characterized as the Goden Hour almost always these moments are not even close to an hour.  Most often they are there and gone in a heartbeat.  You snooze you lose.

Nevertheless,they are a welcome addition to my day; especially travel photos set to music.

Autumn Is Knocking On The Door

From our walk today there is further evidence of the changing of the seasons.

 

Busy bumble bees, migratory songbirds winging their way south and mast crops in the woods.

 

 

Acorns

 

 

Walnuts

 

 

Bumble bees on Canada Goldenrod

 

 

Blue birds built the first nest.  After their brood fledged some house wrens moved in and did the same.  Nest box is doing double duty this season for the migratory songbirds.