Garden cleaning, creating a corn chowder recipe, antique New England home

In a nutshell, I had to start over and I made my own corn chowder recipe this week along with a lot of garden bed clearing and work around our antique New England home. ©

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Okay The sun is just coming up over the hill they must have had a beautiful sunrise when there were no trees here at one point so it won’t be long I think I’m going to go sit in the window seat with Willow and watch that come up over the Hill You to come join me little come on up come on I’m taking your seat taking her seat but we fit we both Fit So here we are it’s the week that I promised I was going to make the corn chowder because that was the majority vote on two videos ago that I was going to make I brought home my mother’s recipe box and I shared that my grandmother had her recipe in there and

I was excited to share with my mom I called called her up and I said they actually chose Nana’s corn chowder recipe not even a second it took her to say I never liked my mother’s corn chowder so that said I did go look at it again and I was

Like okay I can understand that because first of all there’s no amounts here other than it’s saying five potatoes one onion uh a quart of milk doesn’t say how much butter how much salt so then I started looking at some of my other recipe books I’ve have my

Out of old Nova Scotia which they did have um a corn chowder bisque which has tomatoes in it and also some thickening agents I have the in cookbook for New England and then I have the joy of cooking along with many other books on my bookshelf now here’s the thing

They’re all different but I have decided since my mother didn’t like this recipe I’m going to kind of I can’t say reinvent the wheel because I will be using a kind of a combination of what’s here at first I thought five potatoes was an awful lot thinking you know they

Were a large family here it is during the Depression time and she was filling them up with potatoes I’m going to dice things up see how they look and I’m not sure if it will be in this video or next but I need to see if it comes out and

How it taste and if it doesn’t taste right I’m going to make it again I also I’m going to go out and buy some salt pork to add to this corn chowder I went to our local butcher and they don’t carry salt pork so we said to go to the

Grocery store because two of these books put in salt pork I also grabbed bacon just in case I can’t find it at the grocery store I did pick up some bacon to put in the Chowder so that’s the story I was all excited thought my mom

Would be pleased and she said she never liked the corn chowder so there you go um and that’s why we always had canned corn chowder now that I think about it probably growing up also my grandmother’s recipe was a can of creamed corn which is also in one of

These books but I could only find Sweet creamed corn and I don’t want I don’t want to add sweet so I’m just going to add um whole kernel corn once again one of these books mentions the whole kernel corn along with or instead of fresh corn

From the cob so once again just going to have to figure how this goes and modify it and play with it now I’m not sure if you can see here off to my my right your left I actually took off the paper whites that dried right on the stems while they were on

The porch and I added a few more willows I had a piece of a faux Foria that fell off when I was putting my up outside so I just stuck that in there but I once again saved my white flowers to use in a future pop Perri so I was

Slowly you know decorating a little bit here and there for Easter we are hosting it this year and I’m looking forward to showing you just a little bit of the Easter Decor but once again I’m not sure if it will be today I have so much coming at me for work and personal

Things that I’m trying to juggle it all and all’s good but it’s just it’s been very busy and when I promise you something I want to make sure that I deliver I just don’t know if it’s going to be this video or not because whenever I start filming I never know when

Something’s going to come up but anyways I need to get myself out to the grocery store see if I can find that salt pork run a couple errands and then hopefully today I will make this to see how it comes out that’s the plan how’s this for a bluebird Sky wow All right so I just got back from the store a couple errands actually I had to buy more wallpaper paste cuz I ran out and I also not only went to get salt pork but I also went to get some swordfish and they forgot to put it in

My bags once I came home realized it wasn’t in there so needless to say I thought I was going to have swordfish tonight I’m not maybe we’ll be having corn chowder so I am definitely going to be winging this I’m going to modify This and like I said this book says two potatoes

This one says six so I’m going to go with three and my grandmother said five so I’m going to go with three potatoes right now I’m going to cut them into small cubes I have my salt pork on the stove right now it has been browned and

Crispy and there’s nice oil on the bottom from it I’m going to layer these in with the onion and one thing that I’m going to do different I have never done this before but this book says to pour boiling water over the potatoes and onions until soft never done that before

But I figured why not try something different and I’m going to do that so I’m going to cut these up and I’m going to add them to the pot and then my onion see so right now I do have water getting hot in my tea kettle and that’s what

I’ll try pouring over the top now I there are so many variations of making this and um I know some of you going to have some a lot better ideas but one thing I’d like to know have you ever poured boiling water over a recipe like this versus bringing them to a boil

Once they’re already in there I’m just curious and this is out of the Nova Scotia book what is this one say this one has you sautéing the onions which I’m going to do in a sep no that’s mushroom soup I’m in the wrong one I still have to saut it so I’m going

To sauté the onions also with the fat that’s so funny they’re all so different so once again one says four small onions one says two medium onions my grandmother just says one onion chopped so I had a very large Vidalia here and I’m just going to be using half of

That and I’m going to be chopping it finely I’ve already done it in the the Direction okay they’re starting to get to a nice golden brown here they’re getting nice and soft and translucent once again one recipe said to cook them in the boiling water and one said to sauté them first I’m preferring to sauté them first then I’m going to pour boiling water over this with the

Potatoes my salt and pepper and once I do bring it to a little simmer once they’re done then I’ll be adding the corn and hot milk right now just going to cover it pouring enough in just to cover these potatoes and then I’m going to keep simmering this until they become

Soft there we go okay the potatoes are now tender I’m going to start with one can I’m not going to use the cream style corn so I’m going to do this I might have to do another can and I’m heating up my milk I think I’ll do two cans it is corn

Chowder so instead of just milk I’m doing half and half half cream half milk I’m going to cook this for a little bit longer I’m going to add some butter also then I’ll check my seasoning one recipe called for 2 tblspoon of butter one called for 4 tablespoons my grandmothers just says

Butter so I’m going to start with two and see how it tastes and then I only have two teaspoons of salt in here right now but I just had a potato and it seemed a little bit like it’s going to need some more salt and I forgot to note I only cooked the

Potatoes until they’re a little soft because you don’t want to get them cooking too much that they’re going to turn to mashed potatoes in here so they’re right now just perfect I did just add two more tablespoons of butter you can’t go wrong with butter and I definitely need a little more

Salt and I need a spoon what did I do with my spoon hello one of the recipe mentions sprinkling some Chive On Top now I know we saw a little bit of chive in the garden this morning out on the side Garden I’m going to see if there’s

Anything coming up in one of the raised beds I can see a little tiny bit but maybe not enough to cut very tiny amount um I think the side Garden had a little bit more I haven’t even cleaned these out yet check out the other Garden I just want enough to sprinkle it

On the top well I have enough here to to trim a little bit I’ll just rinse it off and this will be the first the first thing from the garden this year and when I say it’s a little amount that’s all I got but it’s still it’s a

Little bit of chive to put on top just going to rinse this off chop it up and it’ll be ready to go later tonight I got distracted noticing that we have a few more crocuses that opened so there’s not as much the bees have to fight over but now the weather’s a

Little cool for them to be out but uh spring is here it did snow this morning only flurries but it was here I did end up also cutting the rest of the onion this is a vidalia so it’s very sweet I think next time I will use a yellow

Onion but it looks good it tastes good now of course you don’t have to used the half and half and um but it it comes out it’s nice I’m I’m glad I did it I just shut off the heat I’m going to cover it and just let it

Sit here until it’s dinner time but taste test I think it’s delicious but I’ll let you know after we have our meal well it’s not time for Jenner yet but we’re getting very close I’m just prepping it ready for Meal Time and one thing I want to mention is that even

Though this recipe was most likely created in the South it’s which is what I’ve been reading I can 100% say it’s somewhat of a New England thing because the very first recipe that was published for corn chowder was in 1884 by Boston cookbook and Mary Jane

Bailey Lincoln at uh let’s see of the Boston cooking school I’m reading this uh let’s see was first published in the Boston Cookbook by Mary Jane Johnson Bailey Lincoln that’s a long name in the Boston cooking school and after that a lot of them did follow suit and the one

Thing that I am also reading is that a true corn chowder originally starts with milk and potatoes and corn and then later on you know usually and also cream but then over the years more and more was added and if you want to make this I

Am going to put the recipe I created which is modified to my taste and I would lessen the salt and butter to start and you can just keep adding one thing about the cooking is it’s not like baking you don’t have to be precise so I

Made it to taste for us and I really enjoy it I don’t know if I’ll have it listed on my website in time because right now it is Wednesday evening and we are getting ready just to sit down and relax and then I have this video to edit

And upload and speaking of modifying I have realized that I do not like salt pork and anything else but my baked beans I just didn’t like it the texture it’s not going to happen so I’m going to crisp up some bacon in the oven I love

Doing it that way it’s melts in your mouth I’m going to break it up and put some into the chowder and I’m going to have some just to sprinkle on top as well so when I rewrite this recipe I will not be adding the salt pork like

One of the recipe books did I will be adding [Applause] Bacon I just realized you saw my arm I sometimes come outside with my faux mink and I’ve got my boots it’s a look let me tell you it’s a warm coat and uh I’ve been wearing it all winter outside when I take Willow out now I have to be

Careful I’m not mistaken for a bear cuz it’s it is long and the color of a bear for sure so I don’t know if I already mentioned this or not I’m going to reention it um we finally had somebody come over we’re going to have this Sugar

Shack re-roofed it is in very much dire need of it we’re going to start with the roof and then Ben and I are going to put some slats over the openings and all these Barn boards and then we’re going to repaint it so this is a project that

We’re going to be working on through the year but it’s either going to be the exact same color which I do have somewhere in the basement or a little deeper brown red like a nice really Colonial brown red and then we have to also dig around the edge

Because here there’s a lot of wood rot so we have to dig all around the building and we’re going to put pstone but I want to show you this look how cute this is it’s just like on cartoons where there’s actually a little opening for an animal to get in and I

Think I have one over here so entrance and exit I guess but we need to like I said clear all this up and get anything that is grass dirt mud away from the building and just give it a really cute makeover now this building of course is

Not super old I’m going to guess 1950s 1960s heck it could even be 7s I’m not sure but I’m looking forward to also getting over here and cleaning up a lot of the fern because it does take over over here I’m going to leave a lot of it

But there’s also a section I want to take out so I can get to the blueberries very easily this whole area needs a little bit of love I’m just looking the be marks that were on the tree have pretty much gone away if you remember last year we had a

Bear that climbed this tree here and there’s some claw marks right here and then it left some really big foot prints on the grass here that was kind of freaky so at one point we’ll probably put some of our cameras over here because we were told that bears

Will come back year after year almost like even with DNA and he says he believes that a bird feeder must have been on this tree because there was nothing else for them to climb it for no fruits or anything so yeah this is uh nice and sunny but

It’s still only about 40 right now and I’m kind of getting excited that we do not have snow this year like we had La this snow literally slowed all of the gardening for so many people and we also lost a lot of plants now I’m pleased I have been able

To come out here and I did a quick cleanup I cleaned up a lot of this garden bed here but this area needs a makeover and I don’t know if I’m going to be doing a cutting Garden here I don’t know if I’ll maybe do raised boxes

All the way around for some of our vegetables no idea and I got to clean up a lot of this still but I did do a lot of raking already and over here we had some major winds it even knocked down my little trellis Towers here but if you remember

I was cutting these faia trees I have reshaped them and I’m looking forward to what they look like this spring and summer and into the fall with the greenery nice and full versus just taking over the whole yard I have to get some dark bark mulch brought

Into I will slowly start prepping these boxes and getting them ready these are also going to get a makeover not sure when but they’re either going to be rebuilt or we might just re enclose them with some 2x8s and then build it a little bit higher and then bring in more soil hard

Part is is that once these trees here are in full bloom with their foliage it does block a lot of the Sun so I’m almost thinking this might be more cutting bed flowers also and I just need to straighten this up because I don’t know if it shifted over time with the Earth

But my OCD is having a hard time with this one but that’s not going to be a priority and then over in this part of the garden let me show you what I did I can show you what was done here ask also Ben took out the garden gate posts

Because in a couple videos ago I showed you that one of the gates was ripped off the door by wind but also the movement of the stones was causing them not to be able to close so we’re going to put the posts on the inside of the yard so that

They’re not near any of these stones and we’re going to rebuild I think the doors don’t know when we’re going to do that and then over here I did a lot of cleanup starting to rake out these Gardens and get them ready I have daffodils popping up here I

Have some chive popping up some tulips and I see some some daffodils over here so in a couple weeks this is going to look very different I can assure you I need to do a little bit more trimming of the Lilac Tree I need to take some weight off I probably will

Cut standing here if I can point at it without it going through I’ll probably cut this beautiful Branch unfortunately off but it’s pulling a lot of weight on it and I just don’t want it to snap the tree and I have a lot of new shoots

Coming up so I think it’s time that I do that it got a good clean up last year but some of them are still bent from last winter and I was hoping they’d straighten up again but they did not lavender seem to do well so that will hopefully start getting some green

On that in a couple months if not sooner but I will come out and clean all this up pretty soon I was out here and actually it started raining so I went in but I’m going to head inside now and do some more work Um cleaning up the garden and working and look I found my very first honeybee here’s a couple they’re waking up they’re fighting for the one flower that’s open here I don’t know if he’ll be back but he was filling up I don’t know what it’s called

But the back of their legs they put a lot of pollen there and carry it away but oh yeah here he comes it’s the only crocus that’s open right now we have a lot of rain coming tomorrow but I like seeing that they’re here hopefully it doesn’t get too cold

While they’re out and about for