Veggie Corn Chowder and Super-Easy Whole-Wheat Biscuits from 100 Days of Real Food

We have been in the middle of some very cold weather here in the midwest. Not just wind chills, but the actual high temperatures below zero. When it gets this cold a warm bowl of soup always seems to hit the spot. In my family growing up, we would quite often have biscuits or muffins with our soup. I have been making both for many years, but not very often with whole-wheat flour and certainly not all whole-wheat flour.

I have a good recipe for chicken corn chowder that we like to make, so I thought we would try the Veggie Corn Chowder from 100 Days of Real Food to see how it compares.

Timing: The recipe says the cook time is 30 minutes. It took me about 40 minutes to make this one.
Servings: The recipe says 6 servings, and for our family, it fed all 5 of us for dinner and then gave hubby and me 3 servings of leftovers.
Leftovers: The leftovers were just as good as the original night eating this chowder.

This is a good recipe for corn chowder. It was very sweet due to all the veggies and no protein.

Family Ratings:
Me: I enjoyed this chowder a lot and would certainly eat it again.
Hubby: He thought it was good and ate leftovers, but he prefers soups and chowders with protein.
Big Man: Again, this boy has almost always eaten everything we put in front of him with no complaint. In this case, his response was "it's actually good!"
Bear: This child has not yet met a soup that he likes and whenever he hears that dinner is a type of soup he starts to whine. This was no exception, he whined about the prospect but finished his small severing no more complaining so he could get a second biscuit.
Mr. T: The response from the youngest son was much like the oldest, as soon as his soup cooled enough he ate it with not much difficulty.

The biscuits that we had to accompany the soup went over much better with the children. The boys are like me and we are carb loving people. Hubby could take or leave it and will often leave it, he would prefer something crunchy like crackers. Also, he does not like bread or cookies warm from the oven. I'm not sure where this came from, but I'm training the boys to know the pleasure of goodies fresh baked and warm from the oven.

I have been making biscuits since I was young, so the method is nothing new to me. I use a pastry blender for this type of mixing instead of rubbing the dough with my fingers or using knives or forks. In this case, I used the white whole-wheat flour that was suggested and it worked well to make a nicely risen biscuit.


Timing: Prep and cook time was listed as less than 20 minutes, for me, it took about 25 minutes, but I was interrupted by Bear needing some help in the process.
Servings: The book states 8 to 10 biscuits and I got 9 from this recipe.
Leftovers: The leftovers the very next day were great with leftover soup. They stayed fresh overnight.

Family Ratings:
Me: I thought they were a nice biscuit, but the all whole-wheat flour definitely affected the density. These were dense enough that with all white flour biscuits I do not always add butter, but these needed a bit of butter to help eat it.
Hubby: He didn't have any since warm bread with soup is not his favorite thing.
Big Man: He ate two full biscuits and happily ate an extra the next day. No complaints here.
Bear: These biscuits got my soup averse child to finish his bowl of soup just to have another biscuit. This is a huge compliment!
Mr. T: He really tried to match his big brothers and eat a second biscuit, but his little three-year-old tummy could only manage one and a half.

The boys loved these and didn't seem to notice the difference of all whole-wheat flour and removing the little bit of sugar in my regular biscuit recipe. I thought they were good for knowing they were all whole-wheat flour. Not quite as fluffy as a white flour biscuit, but I didn't expect that and they were still tasty and good for dipping in a warm chowder.

I would make these again and quite possibly replace my regular biscuit recipe with these whenever making biscuits to get more whole grains in my children since they didn't notice a difference and Hubby doesn't really eat them anyway. I think one thing I would change is using a smaller biscuit cutter. Since they were a little bit denser biscuit I think smaller servings might be nice.