Healthier Corn Chowder

What is better on a rainy day than a nice hot bowl of soup? Today was pretty much the rainiest, nastiest, January day we've had in awhile and I was happy to have hot corn chowder waiting when I got home. I found this recipe on my favorite Crock Pot Blog, A Year of Slow Cooking. The author of this blog found the recipe in Slow Cookers for Dummies and I made further adaptations. I really wanted to try this recipe when I saw how healthy it was, but was skeptical about taste when losing cream and butter. I really thought it was delicious and did not miss it one bit. It was a bit too soupy so I added corn starch to thicken, but next time I'd add more potatoes. Below is my adapted recipe.

Healthier Crock Pot Corn Chowder
From A Year of Slow Cooking

Ingredients:

• 2 quarts water with 8 bouillon cubes
• 1 small onion - finely chopped
  
• 1 tbs. olive oil
• 1 red pepper
• 1 handful baby carrots
• 2 (16-ounce) bags frozen corn
• 2 medium potatoes (next time I’d add more potatotes)
• Corn starch to thicken as desired

Procedure:

1. Brown the onion in the olive oil. Brown until it is soft, but not cooked all of the way.
2. Chop the carrots and pepper (the Pampered Chef version of the slap chop works great)
4. Chop the potatoes and leave skin on.
3. Put veggies in Crock Pot.
4. Add frozen corn.
5. Boil water and make broth.
6. Pour over veggies.
7. Cook on low 7-8 hour -- about an hour before serving, use your handy dandy hand blender to blend up the soup!
8. Enjoy!