One Woman's Journey to Her Best Life: Liquid Awesome

So, it's a new year and I've decided that I'm changing things up with my diet and my blogging. I'm going to aim to post some recipes of things I make at home. Since I have a ton of kale at home, I decided to make some soup. After thinking a bit, I thought "Olive Garden's Zuppa Toscana!" Only... it's made with cream and tomatoes... both of which I'm not eating right now. So, I give you my version!

Trisha's Sausage Kale Spinach Soup aka "Liquid Awesome"

I started off making the broth using pork neck bones. I pan-fried them up in some olive oil, dusted with a couple pinches of salt.

Neck Bones inna Pan!

Neck Bones all browned and yummy.

One all nice and brown I added them to the stock pot and filled it with water. I let the water come to a boil and scrapped off all the scummy white stuff. That is pretty much just nasties from the bones floating to the top. Skim it off, let boil for about 10 minutes until no more nasties surface.

Nasties!

Once it was good and clear I threw in a bunch of veggies. In my case it was mushrooms, sugar snap peas, carrots, onion and green beans. Oooh! And some garlic.

Floating veggies in stock!

I let this boil for 1.5 hours then strained the stock and split it in half. (I was making two soups)

Stock is ready for straining!

Now, time to get the Liquid Awesome making. To start, I cut up and cooked 4 slices of bacon.

Bacon!

Added about 10 baby carrots cut up.

Bacon and carrots!

Then a pound of Sage Pork Sausage and cooked until no longer pink.

Sausage, bacon and carrots.

I dumped the meat and carrots into the stock and got the veggies. For this I used a head of purple flowering kale and a bunch of spinach. I roughly chopped them up and added them to the soup.