Soup for Fall Days!!

Since the weather started cooling down here in the Pacific Northwest I’ve started making more soup.  It started one day due to needing to use up some food in my fridge.  So it was just off the cuff so to speak.  I made potato sausage cheese chowder.  My family went nuts over it.  I wish I had a proper recipe to give you but I can give you the basics of what I did. 

I measured out 4lbs potatoes.  I peeled them and chopped them into bite size pieces.  Put them in my soup pot and covered with water.   I cooked them until they were fork tender.  I drained off most of the water.  While they cooked I chopped up one onion and cooked this in my cast iron frying pan with about 1lb of sausage (Jimmy Dean).   After the potatoes were drained I added the sausage/onion mixture and 2 cups of frozen corn and about 2 cups of grated cheddar cheese.   Then I added enough milk to make it the right soup consistency.  Then added a couple tablespoons of butter.  Heated this up until the cheese melted and the soup was hot (tasted it and added salt & pepper until it tasted right to me).  I served it with zucchini muffins and a salad. 

 A couple days later I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner and it was another cool rainy day and thought about soup again.  This time I cooked up 2 cups black beans in 8 cups water and 2 teaspoons salt.  I let this cook for about 2 ½ hours.  While the beans were cooking I chopped up an onion, a green pepper, a stalk of celery, a few mushrooms and some hot links (similar to kielbasa but spicy).  I sautéed this until veggies were soft.  When the beans were done cooking I added the veggie mixture and a can of diced tomatoes and 4 cups of veggie stock from the freezer.  For seasoning I added about 1t cumin and a little brown sugar (or you can use Sucanat).   I served this with the leftover zucchini muffins.   

I have a couple more to share in my next blog post.. :)