First, some excellent news.  TasteSpotting is back!  Thanks for the heads-up, goddess Lemmonex! Now we return to our regularly scheduled programming.

While hanging out at the 7th Street Garden Saturday, admiring the bed of corn, beans and squash and pondering the companion-plant relationship between the three (the beans produce extra nitrogen for the corn and squash; the squash leaves cover and shade the soil, which allows the soil to retain moisture; the corn acts as a trellis for the beans as they both grow vertically, leaving room for the squash to grow horizontally), I decided I'd make a corn, bean and squash summer soup.  Inspired by this soup I read about on Julie's Blog a couple of weeks ago, I decided to make a squash soup and then spoon some corn and bean "salsa" into the middle of the bowl.  I'd picked up the above-pictured medley of summer squash and some corn at the 14th & U Street farmers market Saturday morning.  I didn't keep track of the ingredient amounts as I was making the soup (bad blogger!), so rather than offering an actual recipe here, I'll instead encourage you to trust your gut and make up a soup as you go along.  I began by sautéing garlic, squash pieces and some leftover asparagus stalks, then added chicken stock and a bunch of mint leaves and some thyme and simmered the concoction for about an hour.  I then pureed the soup in a blender, seasoned it with salt and pepper, added a bit of heavy cream, and chilled it for a few hours in the fridge.  When I was ready to eat, I cut some fresh raw sweet corn off the cob and combined it with some canned cannellini beans, salt and pepper.  I served the soup with a few spoonfuls of the corn and bean salsa in the middle and topped it with some chives from my windowsill.  The sweet, crunchy corn was the perfect textural and taste contrast to the earthy, creamy soup.  This was a winner and I've been enjoying the leftovers since.