You can make a nice spicy corn soup with canned corn. This soup is good in the hottest weather. Serve in a cup with a side salad cold thinly sliced steak over crisp romaine lettuce and sliced beefsteak tomatoes with steak sauce dressing*.

INGREDIENTS

4 cans cream style corn (15 oz can)
1 medium onion, finely diced
2 pimentos (from jar) chopped
3 tblspn finely diced green pepper
1 small fresh jalepeno pepper, finely diced
1/2 cup cream
1/2 cup water
2 tblspn olive oil
Salt and pepper to taste

DIRECTIONS

Heat olive oil in large sauce pan. Add onion, pimentos and green pepper and cook until onion is almost transparent. Add remaining ingredients and heat to a low boil. Lower heat and simmer for about 10 minutes, then serve. Garnish with parsley if desired. Good served cold also. If more heat is desired add a dash or two of hot pepper sauce.


Makes 10 to 12 servings - recipe is easy to halve or freeze

Hint
*Steak sauce dressing: 1/4 cup steak sauce and 1/4 cup ranch dressing, mixed together. Thin dressing with rice wine vinegar and spoon over steak and greens.
* A stash of canned vegetables and a variety of soups in your kitchen cabinet can save you from "what shall I make for lunch or dinner" stress. I enjoy fresh asparagus because it is tasty and easy to prepare, however I recently bought canned asparagus on the advice of someone who told me a particular brand was great and limp at all. I opened a the can and the contents fell apart as I tried to remove the stalks. What to do? I did not want to throw three cans of food away. A few days went by before I realized I could make a decent asparagus soup with these over-cooked and very limp (inedible to me) canned vegetables.

Recommended cookbook:
There is more to dried soup mixes than onion soup mix. Check out The Soup Mix Gourmet: 375 Short-Cut Recipes Using Dry and Canned Soups to Cook Up Everything from Delicious Dips and Sumpt (Non Series) from Amazon or other bookstores.