Corn Chowder

First- today is the mid-point of winter, yea! A good thing to know as I watch the snow falling- again!

Last night I made corn chowder, a bit late, I had hoped to make it over the weekend but it's kind of hard to make corn chowder with no corn! So, I am submitting it for next Sunday's Souper Sunday at http://kahakaikitchen.blogspot.com/ and I think also to this weekend's chowder cook-off here in town. The community center is holding a chowder cook-off to raise money for a new stove. I have to the end of the day to decide, we'll see, I might still chicken out.

Here is the recipe I used. I took what I liked from 4 recipes- Tyler Florences', Rachel Ray's Vegetable Choup and 2 I found on allrecipes.
4 cups frozen corn
2 red peppers
2 zucchini
1 large onion
5 cloves garlic
1 tbsp dried thyme
1/4 cup flour
6 cups chicken stock
4 small potatoes
2 cups light cream
2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tbsp Worcestershire sauce
1/2 tsp Frank's hot sauce
1 tbsp paprika

Pour corn into broiler pan, drizzle with olive oil and stir to coat. Convection roast at 400 degrees for 30 minutes, stirring frequently.
Chop into small pieces peppers, zucchini & onion. Put into a large pot with finely chopped garlic and thyme. Saute in 2 tbsp butter until soft, about 6-7 minutes.
Dust with flour and stir to coat everything well.
Pour in stock and bring to a boil.
Stir in potatoes, cream and seasonings. Bring to a boil, boil hard for about 7 minutes until potatoes begin to break down.
Stir in corn and simmer until corn is soft, about 10 minutes.
makes about 3 quarts.

notes- Roasting the corn was a bad idea. It really dried out the corn and made it stick to the teeth- I hate that. I was hoping for a little extra flavor, didn't happen. I adjusted the spices as I went along, so I really can't think of anything else to add. If I make it for the chowder cook off, I will make it with vegetable stock to enter it into the vegetarian category. The paprika gave it a nice color- I was trying to document the recipe as I went along so I forgot the pictures, oops!

If anyone has any suggestions of something else I could add, please let me know. I've never entered a contest before either, so if there are any suggestions for that, I'd appreciate that too.