For the love of corn.

There's a new love in my life. Nachos, watch yer back.

Friends, I introduce you to baked creamed corn with red bell peppers and jalapenos.

Corn was something I didn't really like as a kid. I had jaw issues, so I couldn't (shouldn't) eat corn on the cob. And, let's be honest, any corn we were eating came from a can. The only time I ever had creamed corn was at my grandma's house, and even that is a very faint memory. I'm pretty sure corn was on the "ew, never again list" when I moved away from home (also on this list was chicken and hot dogs). But over the past few years, corn fell back into favor. And I had some REALLY good creamed corn at some really good restaurants (the Chop House in Ann Arbor comes to mind). Color me officially obsessed.

Sometime earlier this summer, I pulled this baked cream corn recipe out of the Food Network magazine. I kept buying the corn to make it, then would be short on time one night and just bake up the cob to have as a side dish with something else. Well, Saturday night, I finally got it together and made this to have alongside crab cakes.

I like this recipe because it's almost all crab, just a little crumb, etc.

There were just two of us (and I didn't feel like de-corning EIGHT cobs), so I halved the corn recipe. I also wanted to eat a lot (somewhat) guilt free, so I used skim milk in place of heavy cream, mixing in about two tablespoons of cornstarch as a thickener. And while I only used one Aleppo, it was a JUMBO jalapeno from Saturday's farmer's market. Let's just say... we both had the spicy corn sweats during dinner.

Always love an opportunity to pull out the retro bakeware.

Everything was delicious on its own, but I quickly made an extra delicious discovery -

A forkfull of corn + crabcake? EVEN BETTER. This mix and match thing is also somewhat new to me. It wasn't that long ago that I didn't even want my food touching on the plate. I'm so glad I outgrew most (most!) of my weird food quirks... But back to the corn, it was just incredibly luscious. Can you describe creamed corn that way? I'm going with it. Sweet and still just a tad crisp, spicy and salty all at the same time. We totally killed it.

I wish fresh corn season would never end. Sniff.