More Bacon Please!

We never buy bacon.  We try to cook healthy meals (we're not always successful) and leaving bacon out of recipes certainly helps.  When I make something for the first time I don't like changing the recipe, so for the baked potato soup we had to buy bacon.  Consequently, we were left with a lot of leftover bacon.  So now that bacon is in the fridge, I'm breaking out all the recipes that call for bacon.

This recipe is one of those that I've made several times without bacon and quite frankly it is bland.  But with bacon... much more flavorful.  I'm convinced that bacon can  make anything taste good.  I'm embarrassed to say that this is loosely based on a Rachael Ray recipe.  She called it Crab and Corn Chowda Mac.  We weren't fans of the crab so now we leave it out.  She also calls for cooked bacon to be put in the cheese sauce which makes it so NOT crispy.  Brett and I both demand crispy bacon, so we used it as a topping.  I used some leftover red onion instead of a white onion and I used Essence of Emeril to season instead of fresh thyme.  So it makes me a little less embarrassed that I have changed her recipe considerably.

It starts with cooking half of a diced onion in olive oil, then adding a T of flour.  Once the flour has cooked for a little bit add half a cup each of chicken broth and milk.  That thickens up and then half a cup of corn kernels is added along with a dash of cayenne pepper and lots of Emeril.  When the corn warms through (I used frozen) add a cup of grated cheddar cheese.  This is the finished cheese sauce.

Cooked macaroni or some kind of small pasta (I have used shells and bow-ties before) gets stirred into the cheese sauce and then it can be served with crunched up bacon on top.  The recipe also calls for chives, but I didn't have any.  

There's one more bacon recipe coming soon...