Chicken and Sausage Soup

Another way to use up any spare kale you may have on hand. The soup would also be good with any other green instead of the kale, such as collard, mustard, Swiss chard, and spinach. For fun, I used purple potatoes for this soup, but they didn’t remain very purple. They didn’t even taste different. Oh, well. Gotta keep trying.

 INGREDIENTS

1          chicken breast or 3 chicken tenders
1          carrot
1          cup chopped celery
1          medium potato, diced to ½ inch
4          cups chopped kale
2          cups low sodium chicken broth
2          cups dry white table wine
1          medium zucchini
1          small red or yellow bell pepper
1          sausage, 4 to 5 inches in length. (Polish, Italian, Garlic, Cajun etc.)
½         teaspoon garlic powder
¼         teaspoon salt

METHOD

Cut the chicken into ½ inch pieces and place into a large sauce pan. Take a head of celery and slice the top portion into thin slices, including inner leaves and all. Place this into the sauce pan. Cut the carrot in half length wise and slice the lower half into thin slices. Cut the upper part in half length wise and then slice into thin slices. Place the carrots into the sauce pan. Put the kale in to the sauce pan, add all the liquid and bring to a boil. Lower the heat to a simmer, cover and cook for 5 to 6 minutes.

Meanwhile, cut the zucchini in half length wise and slice into thin slices cross wise. Set aside.  If you wish, you can use half of a red pepper and half of a yellow pepper or a whole pepper of either kind. Remove the inner seeds and white flesh and cut into ½ inch square pieces. Set aside. Thinly slice the sausage cross wise and set aside. When the soup has cooked 5 minutes, place all these ingredients along with the garlic powder and salt into the sauce pan, stir to combine and cook covered for 10 minutes.

Serve immediately as either a soup course (5 to 6 servings) or as a main course (2 to 3 servings.)