Home Living
A consummate
corn
chowder
recipe
B
Tuesday, July 26, 2022
The Observer & Baker City Herald
WENDY
SCHMIDT
BETWEEN THE ROWS
Sunchokes
— by any
name — are
tasty, great
for gardens
J
Corn chowder is a perfect
summer dish. The fl avors
and texture evolve with
reheating. You can even
serve it cold for a picnic
in the shade.
Ellen M. Banner/Seattle Times-TNS
(and it’s vegan, too)
By BETHANY JEAN CLEMENT
The Seattle Times
S
EATTLE — Corn chowder
does not sound like a thrill.
A ubiquitous vegetable plus
a soup intended to make
use of any kind of ubiqui-
tous stuff using also-ubiquitous milk
and/or cream, plus other ubiquitous
vegetables. ... should be fi ne. Not
amazing, however. And, then, vegan
corn chowder — not to cast aspersions
on anyone’s dietary choices, but sub-
tracting the dairy from the situation ...
maybe less good.
Chef Kristi Brown of Seat-
tle’s stellar Communion makes
AMAZING vegan corn chowder.
Apologies for the all-caps, but this is
corn chowder that makes one want to
SHOUT ABOUT IT. To quote myself
from January 2021 (for I already have
rhapsodized about this corn chowder):
“This superlative soup could fool the
biggest butter-lover: luxurious in tex-
ture yet also earthy, sweet and slightly
smoky, spicy but sneakily so. The
star ingredient is joined by a full sup-
porting cast of sweet potato, carrot,
celery and onion, served topped with
lots of green onion diagonal-cut for
peppery freshness.” In December
2020, I also correctly described this
vegan corn chowder as “magnifi cent.”
I pestered Brown for details back
then, and she would say only that it is
defi nitely vegan, that very good olive
oil comes into play, that saving lots
of vegetable scraps to make your own
vegetable stock is clutch, and that the
seasoning is her own mix of “like 18
diff erent spices” that she calls Sez’.
She says she’s going to start selling
Sez’, and we all should hope fervently
for this gift to humanity.
Brown’s vegan corn chowder is so
good that everybody wanted to eat it,
so at Communion they had to make it
sometimes 20 gallons at a time, and
she got sick of it, and she says she
might never put it back on the menu
again, or then again, she might some-
time. Genius is allowed its caprice.
Summer is the best season for corn
chowder because fresh, local sweet
corn is ALSO AMAZING, and, if
you’re not going to eat it right off
the cob, unsullied by anything, corn
chowder is, factually, the only other
way to go. Also: Corn chowder is
excellent served cold in the shade on
a hot afternoon, possibly with a glass
of rosé (or eaten out of the pot whilst
cooling off in front of the open refrig-
erator at any hour, day or night).
On behalf of us all, I recently
re-pestered Brown via text message
about her vegan corn chowder, and
while she is unwilling to part with the
See, Chowder/Page B2
History of the Grande Ronde Valley House, Grace Building
The Grande
Ronde Valley
House, built
before 1889 at
the corner of
Adams and Fir
in downtown
La Grande,
was razed
in 1928 and
replaced by
the Grace
Building.
GINNY
MAMMEN
OUT AND ABOUT
he fi rst known building,
called the Missouri House,
at the northeast corner of
Adams and Fir in downtown La
Grande was shown on the 1889
Sanborn map. The date it was
constructed is unknown. Ten
years later, in 1899, William H.
Ferguson and his wife, Anna,
came to La Grande where Wil-
liam became manager of the
establishment. In the early 1900s
William purchased the busi-
ness and the name was changed
to Grande Ronde Valley House.
William passed away in 1913, at
age 65, after a bout with pneu-
T
Contributed
Photo
monia. The boarding house con-
tinued in business until the late
1920s.
Over the years various small
businesses occupied the ground
fl oor lobby of the Grande Ronde
Valley House while the rooms
on the second fl oor were rented
to locals, weary travelers or trav-
eling salesmen such as Professor
C.H. Jones and A. Stewart, mag-
netic healers, who professed to
treat all diseases.
In the early 1920s Eugene
and Ed Moon announced they
were establishing a drug store in
the lobby of the Grande Ronde
Valley House. The Moon brothers
had grown up in La Grande and
were the grandsons of Oscar
Wheeler Moon, the engineer on
the fi rst train to arrive La Grande
in 1884. It wasn’t long before
Eugene and Ed were joined by
their brother, Elmer, who had
been working for Blummner
Frank Wholesale Drug Com-
pany. Then in November of 1927
Harry, a fourth brother, returned
to La Grande from Portland and
joined the fi rm.
Eugene stayed in the busi-
ness for about four years and
erusalem artichokes are not
artichokes at all. Helianthus
tuberosa, also known as sun-
chokes, sun root, earth apple, or wild
sunfl ower, are part of the asteraceae,
(aster, or composite) family. They
were one of the staple foods for Native
Americans of the Midwest, very valu-
able toward the end of winter when
other foods had run out, and before
new growth started in the spring.
Sunchokes can be eaten raw, or
cooked and stir-fried. Raw, they taste
similar to water chestnuts. Cooked,
they’re similar to artichokes. They are
high in carbs, so need to be avoided
if you’re on a keto diet. Containing
high amounts of inulin instead of
starch (which converts to fructose, not
sucrose, in the digestive tract, making
it better for diabetics) they keep glu-
cose levels stable and help lower blood
pressure.
There are at least 52 varieties of
sunfl ower. Most of them are annuals
and all are edible. You can batter and
deep-fry the fl ower buds, harvest the
seeds or leave them to be harvested
by birds.
Livestock, especially chickens and
horses, benefi t from eating sunfl ower
seeds. This should be a supplement,
not 100% of the animal’s diet. The
oil improves the quality of fur and
feathers.
Sunchokes are 4 feet to 9 feet tall.
Not all sunfl owers are so tall. There
are dwarf varieties which are good
candidates for container-growing.
To have a continuous supply of sun-
fl owers blooming, practice succession
planting (planting a few seeds every
week or so). By late July or the fi rst
week of August, stop planting addi-
tional sunfl owers. We sometimes get
an early frost. In case our frosts are
late, it is worth taking a chance on
later planting.
Chris Walker/Chicago Tribune-TNS
The sunchoke, also called a Jerusalem
artichoke, is lumpy like ginger root but
versatile and rich in potassium and iron.
Sunchokes are perennial, but
“mammoth,” “Helianthus annuus”
(the common sunfl ower), “H. debilis”
(cucumber leaf sunfl ower) are annuals
especially attractive to bees.
You don’t need a real garden to grow
sunfl owers. Growing is fi ne in a pot
with good drainage. Container growing
is the only sure way of controlling the
invasive nature of sunchokes. But, I’m
not sure if being invaded by sunchokes
would be a bad thing, considering they
are a good food source.
Plant a sunfl ower room for a small
child by planting tall sunfl owers
(“mammoth” variety or sunchokes)
around the perimeter of a large fl ow-
erbed. Seeds should be 12 to 18 inches
apart and 1 to 2 inches deep. The soil
should have good drainage and be
given at least 1 inch of water per week.
Sunfl owers add depth and height to
your landscape by planting them as a
screen at the back of your fl owerbeds.
Although sunfl owers also occur in
blue and pink to red, the yellow vari-
eties seem to exude the happiest vibes.
Joyful gardening and thanks for
reading!
█
See, History/Page B6
Wendy Schmidt is a longtime gardener. She lives
in La Grande.