Happy Insides

We recently joined a CSA like organization called Door to Door Organics that delivers mostly local organic produce to your house once a week. This was week 2 and so far we are enjoying the fresh produce we have been getting. It is so much fun to try to plan meals around what you will be getting in your box every week. This week we got kale, celery, carrots, and fresh basil among other things. Jason came up with the idea to make a soup using these ingredients. Cassie had recently seen a recipe for a sausage, potato and kale soup on the main web-page of eatingwell.com (but didn't look at the recipe). We decided to make something like that and ended up creating our very own and very delicious soup. It had some great flavors and the yams added such a nice hint of sweetness. Next time we will probably add some cayenne pepper or red pepper flakes to give the soup some spice. I am adding red pepper flakes to the recipe because I think they will be a great addition

Sausage, Yam and Kale Soup
1 T. olive oil
3 carrots diced
3 celery stalks diced
1/2 medium onion diced
2 cloves garlic minced
1/2 t. red pepper flakes
6 c. low sodium beef broth
1 yam diced
1 bunch kale chopped
4 turkey Italian Sausages
2 T. chopped fresh basil or 1 t. dried
1/2 t. rosemary
1 t. oregano
1 t. salt
1 t. black pepper

1) Remove the turkey sausages from their casings and brown in a pan over medium. Crumble the meat to be like ground burger.
2) Heat oil in a pan over medium heat. Saute the carrots, celery and onion until tender about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and saute for another minute or two.
3) Place the sauteed vegetable and the remaining ingredients in a crockpot and put on low heat for 8 hours.

This really was so simple. There was lots of chopping to do, but everything else came together nice and easy. We used beef broth because we had some in the house, but I am sure chicken or vegetable broth would work as well.