Sunday Dinner: Spicy Italian Sausage Soup and Apple Pie

I missed writing about Sunday dinner last week - I was actually in San Diego (or really San Marcos) visiting a friend but we did make a nice dinner! She'd never had a delicata squash before so we made the stuffed squash I've posted on the blog before (veggie sausage, onions, mushrooms, apple, hazelnuts, etc) and it was a hit! I love making things that people have never tried and having them love it!

This weekend I knew I wanted to make soup since we had celery from the harvest box, still about a million carrots, and onions. Jonathan asked for sausage soup, which I had never actually considered as a soup ingredient. We did some searching and settled on a recipe for a spicy Italian sausage soup (I used the Field Roast version of Italian sausage of course). It turned out really good - I eliminated about half of the liquid from the original recipe to make it a bit more stew like and I think that was a good call, there would have been far too much broth otherwise. You can find the recipe as I used it below, or click the link to get the original recipe!

Spicy Sausage Soup (adapted from here)
1 package Field Roast Italian Sausage (4 links, ~3/4lbs)
1 large onion, chopped
2-3 stalks celery, diced
2-3 carrots, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 Tbsp tomato paste
32 ounces vegetable stock (I actually used a vegan chicken flavored Better Than Bouillon)
1 tsp. dried oregano
1 tsp. dried basil
1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
4 medium potatoes, cut into bite-sized pieces
salt and pepper to taste

*Dice up the sausage and cook with a bit of olive oil until lightly browned - set aside.
*Saute the onion, carrots, and celery in olive oil for about 5 minutes - add the garlic and tomato paste and cook for another few minutes.
*Add the stock, seasoning, and potatoes and cook for 15 minutes or until the potatoes are tender.
*Add the diced sausage and test for seasoning - enjoy!

 I also finally got around to making that apple pie that I have been meaning to for quite some time. We have almost as many apples as we have carrots to use up (18 lbs from the Harvest Box alone - plus the apples we got at the Portland Cider Festival!). Luckily Jonathan doesn't mind peeling and chopping apples - that's my least favorite part - so he did that while I made the crust. You can find the crust recipe in my post about blackberry pie - it didn't turn out quite as good as that one, but it was ok. Pie crust takes lots of practice I suppose! I think mainly I just needed to roll it thinner - there's always more apples I suppose!

-C