SOUP AND SANDWICH

It's officially fall. I say this because I actually wore my fall jacket and a scarf to work today. (Even though the calendar may say it's fall, I don't consider it truly fall if the temps are still abover 70F). So now that the nights are cooler and the days shorter, I start craving heavier foods. And foods that will warm my tummy. Plus I always gotta figure out things to do with Boston Organics order.

So last night I went home to cook dinner for Tom and made a Kale and White Bean Soup minus the white beans. I wanted to do something new with the kale I'd gotten, and when I was buying all the ingredients, I could've sworn that I had a can of white beans at home. But when I started looking for it, it had mysteriously disappeared. So I used the above recipe more as a guideline and threw in whatever else I had at home. I had also mis en placed everything the day before, so it was pretty easy to throw everything together. I started off by sauteeing garlic, onions and carrots together.
After about 5 minutes, a chucked in 3 cans of chicken broth along with a bay leaf and some rosemary (you can see those floating at the top.)Meanwhile, I chopped up the turkey sausage that I had purchased. I did consider pan frying these prior to adding them to the soup, but I was being lazy and I figured it wouldn't have made a difference. I'd be wrong about this.
After the broth came to a boil and the carrots had softened a bit, a threw in the kale. There was a lot of freaking kale and I didn't even end up using all of it. But the pot was getting full, so I had to stop and waited for the kale to cook down before I added the last of the ingredients.

After the kale cooked down a bit, I added the sausage and some mushrooms that I had left over from the curry I'd made earlier in the week. As you can see, the pot was overflowing. I never expected the sausage to expand like it did and they ended up being more like meatballs than sausages. So I've learned the lesson that next time I definitely need to sautee the sausage before adding it in. Tastewise, I liked the flavor of the soup, but it wasn't much different from the Portuguese Sausage soup that I've made before with kale. Really, the biggest difference was using a different type of sausage. Still, it was a good way to use up the kale and I look foward to nuking this as a snack over the next few days.

After having some soup, I went off to Leah's for my second dinner. We were watching Grey's Anatomy together(Tom stayed at home to watch his own show), and Leah made some really yummy panini sandwiches in her Foreman grill. She picked up a ton of ingredients from TJ's and started off by spreading pesto on some sourdough bread.You can see the other ingredients in the background. She layered on mozzarella, roasted peppers, arugula and chicken sausage and stuck the whole sandwich on the preheated Foreman grill. She had to hold down the lid so the sandwich would get flat and the center of the things would get cooked, which took a few minutes. After a while, the cheese started getting all melty, and it was ready!It was a great sandwich. Lots of flavors and really, who doesn't love melted cheese? I especially liked the sourdough, it's just one of my favorite breads. So thanks leah for a great dinner! (And we were happy that the episode of Grey's was much better than last week's episode. There's still hope for a great season!)