This dish started out as minestrone, but while I was looking for my minestrone recipe, I ran across a recipe that I had photocopied from a Mark Bittman book. Bittman had written a primer/recipe for a quick vegetable soup with lots of different ways to change it, though I don’t remember his including meat.

What follows is my version of which my husband ate 3 helpings.

Sausage, Vegetable, and Pasta Stew

Ingredients

1 quart jar of tomatoes pureed with dried kale
about 2 cups of potato, cubed
2 ribs of bok choy, chopped
1 dozen mushrooms, sliced not too thinly
6 cups of chicken stock
2 to 3 chopped carrots
1 chopped yellow pepper
1 lb. of loose sausage
2 cups of pasta
oregano
basil
salt
pepper
olive oil

Method

Break the loose sausage into chunks if needed, and saute it in a heavy-bottomed pot. Remove from the pot.

Saute the carrot, bok choy, mushroom, and yellow pepper with olive oil.

Add 6 cups of chicken stock, and stir to remove the sausage bits from the bottom of the pot. Then add the potatoes, seasonings, sausage, and pureed tomato. Cook until the potatoes are almost done, and add the pasta. Check the seasonings, and cook until the pasta is done.

Note
I went with the veggie in the pantry and fridge that needed to be used up. No one actually noticed the bok choy. The dried kale was an attempt to get some green stuff into my stew without it being noticeable. If you don’t have dried kale, then fresh kale or spinach would work just as well.

This post is part of:

Pennywise Platter, Fight Back Fridays, Wholesome Whole Foods, Hearth and Soul Blog Hop, Fat Tuesday

Meet Barb

Barb Hoyer has written 4097 posts.

After working in the fundraising world for over ten years, Barb is an avid runner, writer, photographer, parent volunteer, and lover of dictionaries and thesauruses. Wife to an engineer and mom to 5 kids, Barb lives in the suburbs of Philly. Her idea of relaxation is an afternoon on the couch with a stack of books.

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