Harvest Season Soup

Soup is good food. But recipes are hard, so here goes:

Ingredients:

1 lb Hickory Nut Gap breakfast sausage

Half a white onion

1/2 c ? Flour

2 c chicken or veggie stock, + water probably

4 dried guajillo peppers

Roasted pumpkin*

1-1/2c chopped kale

1 Tbsp sage - fresh or dried is fine

Bag stuffing mix for garnish

*by pumpkin I mean any hard-skinned squash. Take pumpkin meant to rot in your yard for the month of October and actually eat it. This one was a nice weird gray one (that I wish I had gotten the name of but I did save seeds), that smelled like a melon when I cut it open… Wash off any dirt, quarter it if you need to to fit in your oven/cook faster, and roast it in your oven on about 400 for maybe half an hour? Maybe less, you just need it peel-able. You can scoop the guts before or after, save the seeds to roast, etc.

Dice and soften onions, add and brown the sausage and break it up, cooking on medium-high heat. Add flour a quarter cup at a time and let it cook a little bit but not too brown. Then add stock about a quarter of a cup at a time - this is the hardest part cause you just made biscuit gravy and you’re gonna want to stop here…

But slowly add more stock until you reach a consistency you like, and maybe some water, remembering to adjust for salt as you go. Dice your dried chilies and add here, along with plenty of black pepper, and diced pumpkin (I don’t have a quantity here but maybe 2 cups?). Simmer 20 minutes or so, check flavor (and if your pumpkin is tender), add chopped kale. Add in some fresh or dried sage if you’ve got it.

Last flavor check, bowl it up, use stuffing mix like it’s croutons. Enjoy!