A Hearty Veggie Soup with Friends

Some of my friends and I have reached the age where it is not uncommon to lose a spouse to death. Often it's the wife who is left to find her own way through grief and towards a new life without the love of her life. Fortunately I still have Sweetie to enjoy time with and, even more fortunately in some ways, he is sweet about having a dear friend who lost her husband six months ago come and have dinner with us now and then. If you are used to eating with others it's tough to face eating alone night after night. So much more fun to eat with friends.

We had the pleasure of Paula's company tonight, but this time she insisted on bringing a main dish soup, and the dessert. Usually we provide the main dish and dessert and she brings a salad or side dish, so it was fun to turn it around, plus, she brought a wonderful, hearty, veggie packed soup that sounds like it is easy to make. We served it with freshly baked corn bread and a salad of avocado, cucumber and some of the last of our home grown tomatoes, dressed with a balsamic dressing. 

I suspect that you could play around a lot with this soup, adding and subtracting a bit with the ingredients as you like, and it would still be a winner! I plan on making it myself soon.

Paula's Veggie and Sausage Soup
Serves 6

1 already cooked sausage...chicken apple is good, but Italian would be great, too
1 tablespoon olive oil or ghee butter
1/2 white or yellow onion, peeled and finely chopped
1 teaspoon (4 cloves) minced garlic
1 cup mixed frozen vegetables
1 can Amy's Hearty Minestrone soup
1 can Amy's Low Fat Minestrone soup
1 can baked beans (she used Bush's Vegetarian Baked Beans)

 In a skillet sauté  the onion with the sausage (which you have cubed) until the onion is soft. Add the minced garlic and cook over medium-low heat for 2 minutes, stirring often.

Transfer the sausage mixture to a soup pot and add the mixed veggies, the canned minestrone soups, and the canned baked beans. Add water until the consistency you like. Simmer for 30 minutes. Serve hot.

Sweetie's Pi Day Pie

Sweetie really enjoys pies and this year on Pi Day we were also remembering our beloved black lab Pi who left us in the fall. We still miss him, a lot, as you might expect since he was the best dog we've ever had...and that's difficult because we've been blessed with a number of great dogs. Here is a photo of our Pi dog when he was young:

Usually I would bake a sweet pie, but this year I went for a quiche...basically a savory cheese, veg and custard pie. We had it for dinner on March 14th and Sweetie had more today for lunch.

If you use pre-made pie crust dough for this, it all comes together fairly quickly. You can go with the filling ingredients I chose, or use your own mixture. This one had sweet breakfast sausage as the meat, and not a lot of that, so mostly the vegetables were the stars. Onions, mushrooms, potato and asparagus were also my fillings but I think if I made this again I would skip the potato. It made the pie so dense that it took longer to bake and there was less of the delicate creamy egg custard, too. There was too much custard because of all the filling, so some dripped off and cooked on the baking sheet I had under the pie and some drips got between the pie dough and the pie tin, so the crust stuck a bit. Note to self: use less solid filling to allow room for more custard filling.

If you are planning this for dinner, do remember to start a little early since you need to blind bake the crust and let it cool a bit before putting in the fillings.

Spring Quiche with Asparagus and Swiss Cheese  and Mushrooms and Onion
Serves 4 - 6

1 9-inch pie shell, blind baked at 425 degrees F for 10-12 minutes (see notes)
1/3 cup finely chopped yellow onion
1 tablespoon olive oil
1 cup Swiss cheese, cut into ¼ inch dice
1/2 baked potato, peeled, thinly sliced
2 small, cooked Breakfast Sausage patties, each cut into 6-8 pieces 
3 eggs (or equivalent egg substitute)
1 ½ cups evaporated milk or light cream or 1 1/4 cup whole milk
¼ teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon dried thyme
dash pepper
Dash nutmeg
3-4 spears asparagus, tough bottoms trimmed off and sliced in half through the length of the spear
4 oz. crimini mushrooms, sliced thinly

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.

In a small skillet, sauté the onion  in the olive oil until translucent, about 5 minutes, stirring often. Add the sliced mushrooms, stir and cover. Turn heat to low and cook another 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Sprinkle the bottom of the pie shell with the sautéed onion-mushroom mixture and Swiss cheese, distributing evenly. Top with the sliced potato. Sprinkle sausage pieces evenly over that. Set aside.

In a bowl, beat the eggs lightly, then add the milk and beat with a fork to combine, add the salt, thyme, pepper and nutmeg and beat with a fork or whisk to combine.

Arrange the half asparagus spears in a nice pattern on top of the onions, mushrooms, potatoes, sausage and cheese in the pie shell. 

Pour the egg/milk mixture over the ingredients in the pie shell. Place in the preheated oven and bake 30-45 minutes, or until set and lightly browned. I find that setting on a parchment-lined small baking sheet is a good idea in case some of the filling spills over. Cool for 10 minutes before cutting to serve.

Note: Use your favorite one crust pie dough, rolled for a 9-inch pie pan, or a package of pre-made dough like Pillsbury ReadyCrust (you'll have one pack of dough ready for another pie) at room temperature. Fit the dough into a 9-inch pie pan, crimp the edge, put in baking parchment and weigh with pie weights or beans, then bake for 10-12 minutes in a preheated 425 degree oven. Remove from oven, cool 5 minutes, remove the pie weights/beans and let pie shell, now blind baked, cool for another 10 minutes before adding the filling ingredients.