Giving up some of my hard-earned recipes.  Because–I dunno—science, I guess.

Feel free to use these recipes and even to pass them along to your friends, but please remember that everything here (with notable exceptions) is copyrighted by me (Brett Hainley) and is not in the public domain.  If you like it so much, simple courtesy demands that you at least credit me before republishing any of these elsewhere.  I understand that cooking is never done in a vacuum, and that all of my recipes started with someone else’s, but most of these were years in development after I acquired the base, and it’s simple courtesy.  Anyway, wherever I remember where I got a recipe, I plan to credit the source.

So anyway, this first one has been a staple in our house since the first time Donna and I visited her relatives in Nova Scotia, one August (or, as we in Texas call it, Winter).  Donna’s Uncle Eugene and Aunt Audrey invited us over one afternoon for lunch, and he’d prepared an amazing whitefish chowder.  He hinted at some of the ingredients, but it took a couple years of experimenting before I got something that I consider close.  As far as I know, chicken or pork can easily be substituted for the seafood with no other adjustments.

Seafood Chowder

• 1 qt. Heavy Whipping Cream
• 1 qt. Whole Milk
• 1/2 lb. Butter
• 1 lb. Seafood (I usually go with half a pound of cod or haddock and half a pound of some sort of shellfish)
• 4-5 medium potatoes, cubed
• 1 medium yellow onion, chopped
• salt
• pepper

Begin heating the milk, cream, and butter together in a large stew pot on low heat.  Milk and cream get kind of pissy if exposed to too much heat too fast, so I usually start and the lowest possible setting on my stove and work my way up to medium over the course of about an hour.  Stir in the seafood, potatoes, and onion.  Keep increasing the heat incrementally until it reaches medium and begins boiling.  Boil on medium heat for about an hour.  Salt and pepper to taste and allow it to cool enough to eat.

Don’t worry if it gets a little grainy looking.  That can happen due to various oils and acids in the fish, but it doesn’t affect the taste and really doesn’t hurt the texture of the soup in your mouth.  This soup reheats well, and is both filling and satisfying, especially on the cold, wet days of early autumn and mid-spring.  Or, as we Texans call it, December.