Soup, No Salad Necessary

I’m making a variation of Olive Garden’s Zuppa Tonscana. It’s a great way to eat ground beef and get your leafy greens & carbs in one pot.

I got the recipe from http://www.tuscanrecipes.com/recipes/olive-garden-zuppa-toscana.html

Except I never follow portions and I try to always use one pot so this is my today variation:

1)-In a stock pot,

-Cook some ground beef and/or ground sausage with ground turkey, chopped hot dogs, chopped sausage, chopped pepperoni (etc)

2)-Drain excess fat in Colander after mostly cooked

3)-Return to pot and brown with fresh or dried sweet peppers

-and chopped leeks, chives or green onions

-and 2-4 frozen garlic cloves or dried garlic

-(add bacon bites if you want- makes nice flavor if using mild meat)

-(today I’m also adding chopped celery because I have it in the fridge to use up)

4)-Add filtered water as much as you want up to 2/3 of the stock pot

-Add chopped or sliced potatoes (almost any kind will work, I usually use small red potatoes or new potatoes but today I’m trying large yukon gold)

5)-Heat until Boiling and reduce to low or medium low

-Cook until potatoes are tender

5)-Reduce heat to low

-Add heavy cream and/or whole milk (I use a little bit of cream and some unsweetened plain soymilk or whatever type of dairy-style stuff is in my fridge)

-Allow diary to become warm

-Add salt to taste

6)-Add FRESH Kale Leaves NOT the hard STEMS about 5 minutes before serving (Today, I’m also using fresh mustard greens because there was only one bunch of kale left at the store. This is really the only part that you can’t change - you must use fresh leaves for it to taste good!!!!)

Yep, it tastes good. I served it to my husband with crushed red pepper on top. (Our 2 year old and I ate the mild version.)