Chunky Vegetable & Italian Sausage Soup

Yummy. Yummy. Yummy. 

Chunky. 
Creamy. 
Spicy. 
Sweet. 
Soup.

On a hot summer's day. 

!?

It's called air conditioning folks! Or, better yet, it's those amazing heat pumps you've all heard of!  AMAZING! AAAAAA-Mazing!! Seriously.  It was gross hot out.  Humid, heavy, and cloudy. Begging for rain.  Our back deck was full of mosquitoes.  Yuck.  Kind of made me miss winter.  For a second.  So, yes, we stayed indoors most of the day.  Don't judge!  We played, had friends over, and made yummy food.  It was a great day.  

So, cloudy day to me, no matter how hot it actually was, meant soup.  I started to make our favourite creamy vegetable soup, but then I remembered how awesome sausage is and that we had some in the freezer.  And then I remembered Hannah won't let us feed her anything by spoon anymore but yet she hasn't figured out spoon-feeding herself yet.  So, I give you 'Chunky Vegetable & Italian Sausage Soup'.  Half smooth and creamy, half chunky and spicy.  Yummers! 

Also, I just want to toot my own horn for a moment - for a while I was protesting the whole 'posting multiple photos of the same food' on food blogs because sometimes it drives me nuts to scroll through them all, but then part of me was kind jealous of the awesome photos they would have.  And part of me was protesting because I thought it was impressive enough to have 1 decent photo to post, and remember the recipe, and even remember to post it, while taking care of a 1 year old who is usually whining about something as suppertime rolls around.  I thought it would be too hard to actually get more than 1 photo up. Well, I've taken that as a new challenge and am getting there folks!  This one's got 3 photos! And there were more!  But baby steps.  Baby steps. 

Alright, here's the recipe! 

P.S. And yes, in the photo below, that's Hannah's little bowl of soup with a side of cheerios.  (too cute, just had to post)  She eats everything we eat.  Or at least we try and make it that way.  She just ate the sausage.  But it was good try. 

Total Time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:
Oil for cooking - I've gotten used to using coconut oil for everything now! 
2-3 Italian-style/flavour sausages, sliced - I use a local farm, very few ingredients - no gluten or sugar! Tip: keep frozen until ready to use.  Much easier to chop frozen than thawed. 
1 onion, chopped
1 large sweet potato, chopped bite-size
2 medium potatoes, chopped bite-size
2 medium parsnip, peeled and chopped bite-size
2 medium carrots, peeled and chopped bite-size (carrots missing here... still tasted great without though - just goes to show, use whatever you have)
2 cloves garlic, minced OR as I did tonight, large bunch of garlic scapes finely chopped
Vegetable or Chicken stock (or combo of both as I did tonight!) enough to fill up just to cover veggies (varies on the amount of veggies - usually 2-4 cups)
2 tsp-ish each: cumin, ginger, summer savoury
1 tsp-ish each: sea salt, pepper, cinnamon, paprika
optional: 1 cup more/less of coconut milk (gives it a creamier texture and taste (could use regular milk as well)
optional: green onion on top!

What to do:
1) Heat oil over medium heat.  Add sausage and stir around, until cooked through and browned, leaving yummy flavours on the bottom of the pot.  Add half garlic scapes if using them, as well.  Once done, remove from pot and set aside. 
2) Add more oil to the hot pot.  Keep medium heat on and add veggies.  Stir around.  Add a splash or two of stock.  Stir and scrape flavours from the bottom of the pot. Once well incorporated, add rest of stock, spices and coconut milk, if using.  You just want to barely cover the veggies.  Too much and you'll have a watery soup, not creamy.  Trust me, I've failed at this many times.  Watery soup is not good.  
3)Bring to a boil and let simmer for 10 minutes or so, until veggies are soft enough to each (pierce with a fork or just try one!)
4) Once veggies are soft enough to each, remove pot from heat.  Use an immersion blender to half blend the soup.  Meaning do not blend the whole thing - just do a few spots here and there.  Or, transfer half of the soup to a blender, blend up, and return back to the pot.  Stir together so it is chunky and creamy.  Add in your sausage.  Stir.  Devour with crusty warm bread or crackers. Yum.