Tsumommy's Clam Chowder

Ingredients:
2 Tbsp butter, melted
2 slices bacon, chopped (maybe 3 or 4)
2 stalks celery, finely diced
1 small onion, finely diced
½ tsp kosher salt
2 bay leaves
8 small yellow potatoes, diced small with skin on (¼” cubes)
2 Tbsp flour
8 oz clam juice
1 cup half&half
½ cup milk
¼ cup white wine
1½ pounds clams
Freshly ground black pepper

Instructions:

Cook the clams. Clean them. Dice them (fairly small). Set them aside. 
 
In a stockpot over medium heat, cook the chopped bacon.
Add the butter. When it’s nicely warm, add celery, onion, bay leaves & salt to the bacon/butter mix.  Cook until veggies are soft, stirring continuously.
Sprinkle the flour in and mix carefully, stirring constantly, making a roux.
 
Add cubed potatoes and the liquids: clam juice, half&half, milk, white wine.
Simmer until potatoes are soft. Stir as needed. Do not boil.
Add the diced clams. Heat the mixture up again. 
 
Serve. Add pepper to taste in the bowls.
Serve with crackers, and perhaps white wine.

Verdict: Really good! Makes enough or 4 or 5 servings.

Zucchini flour

You may have heard it called Amish flour or troops flour before. It’s a Staple in Amish and Mennonite household for generations. It was also embraced in the 1940’s during rationing. 

It's a low-carb, gluten-free flour. Or it's good for just stretching your flour, or for using up all those zucchinis that grow so quickly. You can substitute zuke flour for coconut flour 1:1.

There’s probably fancier ways of doing this out there, but here’s how I learned. It's pretty easy.

You let your zucchini grow, oversized zucchini will give a milder-flavored flour. Peel with a carrot peeler, into thin even strips. If you shred the zucchini (cheese shredder or food processor), it will dry faster, but take more space and be messier.

You can use the skins and seeds if you’re using small-to-medium size fruit; if you’re using a great big one, leave skins and seeds out.

Dehydrate the zucchini. It must be absolutely dry, paper dry, crispy dry. It’s essential. If in doubt always dry it more; any moisture will ruin it during storage

Then run the dried strips through a food processor until you have a powdered consistency. It will be a marbled green looking power if you kept the skin. The texture should be similar to a good quality whole wheat flour. If it’s not fine enough for you, sift the flour. You can run the siftings through a coffee grinder and sift again.

That is zucchini flour. Three large zucchini is about four or five cups finished.

It can be used to replace up to ⅓ of the flour in most recipes without any change to the finished products. It acts as a thickening agent for gravies, great for breading fish. I’m told it makes good tortillas or naan bread. It also makes great dumplings and brownies.

Store in air tight jar or vacuum pack it; adding a desiccant (silica) packet to keep humidity down. Do not store the flour in the refrigerator (too much moisture) and use within 6 months for best quality. Alternatively, store the sliced/shredded zucchini in the freezer and process it when you’re getting ready to bake.

So this is free, sustainable, easily produced on site and it has a mild taste. Most people wouldn’t pick up on it. It cuts our flour usage by a third. You can make flour with sweet or regular potato, other squashes, and with pumpkin. I just find myself zucchini is the least flavored. Plus we get overloaded by the darn things.