Happy Monday! Hope you all had a wonderful, delicious weekend! I had a food-filled weekend in the kitchen, as usual, and I'm looking forward to sharing with you some of the culinary adventures I had. After last week's feature of Cuban cuisine, this week I'll be focusing on some picnic friendly recipes. The recipes this week will be ones perfect for a picnic and those I prepared for Fourth of July. For the Fourth of July, we enjoyed a Southern inspired picnic with Southern Fried Chicken and a couple of great side dishes. One side included this Baked Creamed Corn with Bell Peppers. Buttery sweet corn is baked with bell peppers, cream and cojita cheese for a creamy, colorful side dish worthy of a picnic...

So  how was your weekend? Any fun eats? For me, my past weekend can be summed up in one word - exhausting. This past weekend I hosted a French Bistro Brunch party featuring crepes and quiche. Then there was a fun 11 year old birthday party I hosted for a special little girl named Daisia. Lastly, I catered a sushi party for a client's surprise birthday party. Needless to say, I'm still exhausted from all three of those events - which all took place on Saturday, back to back. Thankfully Sunday was a day of rest, where I had some family time to celebrate the birthday of the Baron's dad.

But back to this recipe... this is especially good to use up the season's sweet corn. But if you don't have fresh sweet corn, you can substitute it with frozen or canned corn - about 2 cups. It won't be as fresh but it will do. We liked how the cheese adds a bit of saltiness and gave the dish a bit more body. For the bell peppers, feel free to use any color you'd like. I wanted to showcase the colorful peppers I had on hand so I used a combination of them for a total of 1 cup of diced peppers.



4 ears corn, husked
1/3 red bell pepper, diced
1/3 green bell pepper, diced
1/3 orange or yellow bell pepper, diced
1/2 cup cream
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon ground pepper1 teaspoon garlic powder
2 tablespoons butter, melted.1/4 cup cojita cheese

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.

Slice the corn kernels from the ear into a large bowl [Tip: place a small bowl upside down inside a pie plate.  Position the corn on the cob vertically on top of the small bowl and slice the kernels off the sides. The corn will fall into the pie plate.] Transfer corn kernels into a large bowl.

Add the remaining ingredients to the bowl and stir to combine. Transfer corn mixture into a two quart baking dish. 

Bake for 45 minutes in preheated oven and serve.