I tried once again to mimic Olive Garden’s zuppa toscana. My soup was pretty close. Here’s what I did.

I didn’t have any chicken bones in the freezer, so I used the goose left over from Christmas Eve’s turgoosen. So the goose stock was made with the goose carcass covered in water, half an onion, a healthy portion of garlic, some thyme, rosemary, and a healthy shake of my favorite spice. Also some pepper from the pepper mill. Oh, and 4 or 5 boullion cubes (I used 1 beef and 4 or 5 chicken).

Meanwhile, I thawed four sweet Italian sausage links, removed the casings, and made sure the meat was chopped up as small as I could (so that I would have a harder time picking the meat out of soup, which I’m very prone to do).

I removed the bones from my stock after boiling it on high for an hour. I added in the ground sausage meat and three diced potatoes. Then, I chopped a handful of fresh spinach, four green onions, and a handful of cilantro and added them when the potatoes were the softness I like my potatoes to be in soup. I added maybe 1/3 cup of heavy cream, although light cream or half and half would also be tasty.

On the side, there was still some rosemary, thyme, garlic bread that I made over the weekend in the bread machine. I love good bread.

Dinner was good. But there was too much sausage in it and I picked about half of it out of my bowl. I don’t know why I’m so opposed to meat in my soup.

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