Easy Italian Sausage and Zucchini Soup

EASY RECIPE

My easy meal idea this week is Italian Sausage and Zucchini Soup. This quick meal can be made using only a fry pan and large pot, so clean up is a snap. I used Hot Italian Sausage but if you want your soup a little less spicy you could use Sweet Italian Sausage.

Step by Step Recipe serves 4:

1 Qt Chicken Broth – fat free

3/4 lb Hot Italian Sausage

1 Yellow Squash – sliced into 1/4″ thick rounds

2 Zucchini – sliced into 1/4″ thick rounds

1/2 White Onion minced

1 Tbsp Fresh Basil – chopped

1 Tbsp Dried Rosemary

1 tsp dried Thyme

1/4 tsp fennel seed

2 Cloves Garlic – chopped

1 14.5 oz Can Crushed Tomatoes

1 can of water (use tomato can)

Place all above ingredients except squash and zucchini in large pot and bring to boil, then reduce to a strong simmer.

Remove skin from Italian sausage, and brown sausage in pan. When Italian sausage is brown on all sides, use spatula to break it into bite size pieces and then continue browning. Spoon out fat grease, and then place sausage into the simmering pot.

Next add the squash and zucchini to the simmering pot and bring to boil , then reduce heat to strong simmer for 25 minutes.

1 Loaf French Bread

Parmesan cheese

While soup is simmering slice French bread, place in large bowl for guests to use to dip in their soup.

After plating individual soup bowls, top each bowl with a small amount of parmesan cheese.

And there you go, you just made a fun family meal or great date night recipe.

AND STUFF

And now for something entirely different.

Years ago after my best friend passed away, and I needed some quiet time. So, I decided to build an RC Nitro TC3 kit car. The car came in a box with a gazillion parts in dozens of plastic bags. I bought an Italian nitro-burning engine for the car. With the remote control the darn thing cost almost as much as my first real car. But it gave me about 6 weeks of quiet time to process the loss.

Many years later, I find myself with more free time than usual, and its summertime with my son out of school. So, rather than send my son to another camp, we decided to have our own RC building camp!

First we needed a kit. Seems that nitro cars are out of favor now, so everything is electric. I can attest to how hard it is to fire up a nitro. But, once lit up it is sooo fun to hear the car scream past. Also, the smell of burnt nitro ‘in the morning’ is kind of cool too. But now it’s an electric hobby.

So we went to a sleepy hobby shop to check out kits. The shop we went to did not have anything in stock. Further, we found out that an arena truck kit without motor, battery, receiver, or transmitter would run about $250.00.

That’s when I turned, for the first time, to Ebay. My son and I found an unopened RC TC4 arena truck kit and began bidding. I wanted the kit so I bid significantly higher than the current bid to see who was lurking around. And then with 2 days to go the bidding got hot and heavy. I knew the retail price of the kit and stuck to my guns. At one point I felt kinda guilty because in my mind’s eye I could see some little kid bidding up his last dollar in nickels and dimes, only to have me up the bid again.

Well, we got the kit at a very good price, and then began looking for a motor on Ebay.

With all we needed to start construction, we started to build the TC4. Every afternoon, after lunch, and before lacrosse or football practice we would pull the folding table out of the garage, set it up in the driveway and start working. It was awesome to see how well my son took to following the directions, and working with his hands as he built the kit. He has really matured in the last year.

From time to time we would get stumped, and even have to take a section of newly completed work apart and rebuild it. But we moved on. One day my oldest son came by to admire the work, and while fiddling with the front supsension it fell off. Back to the drawing boards.

With the encouragement of She Who Must Be Obeyed, we finished the kit, installed the motor, receiver, and battery pack and fired it up.

Nothing but a whirring sound.

Back to the directions. We took the rear-end apart twice with no improvement. We needed help. We had found a lively shop (Hobbytown USA) where we purchased the battery, receiver, and transmitter, and took the car to them for help. They immediatley saw what we had done wrong, and corrected it in about 5 minutes.

The arena truck is done, and it is fast, very fast! Tomorrow we are going to fire up my Nitro, it should be very fun indeed – old school versus new school.

So funny enough I guess I just wrote my “What I did Last Summer” report. Cliff Notes version: We had a blast.