Sausage Potato Soup

It's been a really rough few weeks and has been hard for me to get excited about cooking and even eating! Right before Mother's Day I was put on a gluten free and dairy free diet (perfect timing huh?). It's been amazingly hard to follow and very overwhelming at times. I am doing better about it and am slowly getting back into wanting to cook. I'm having to either revamp old favorites or having to create new favorites - in order to avoid living on nothing but baked chicken, fish, salads, veggies, and fruit. We've had some rather chilly weather this spring and even had some snow last week. It's been an interesting spring! LOL Anyways, I created this soup last weekend since it was cold enough here to be perfect for soup.

1 lb. Jimmy Dean All Natural Breakfast Sausage (I'd love to try making it again only with Italian Sausage)
1 onion coarsely diced
6-8 scrubbed and diced potatoes
1 - 2  quarts Organic All Natural Beef Broth
Milk of choice (I use whole milk. You can also use unsweetened almond or rice milk)
Potato Flakes (if you need to thicken the broth any)
Spices to taste ( I use salt, pepper, parsley, and Mrs. Dash)

Brown sausage with onion in a large pot. When cooked all the way through, use a little bit of the beef broth to deglaze the bottom of the pan. Add the remainder of the broth and the potatoes. Simmer until potatoes are tender with some of them breaking apart so that they thicken the broth. Add almond milk to the soup to add some creaminess and to thin it out if the soup has become too thick. Serve immediately.

It's a simple recipe that I totally made up on the fly with ingredients on hand, but boy oh boy was it good. There wasn't even a ladle full of it leftover. Gone in a flash! Hope you enjoy it as much as we did!

Angel Biscuits

This recipe is from a church cookbook that my stake published in 1997. We affectionately refer to it as "the red cookbook" since it has a red cover on it. :) It is stained, tattered, dog eared and in general well used and much loved. Over the years I have yet to find a bad recipe in it. While some of them may not end up being to our tastes, the recipes themselves are sound. This recipe is so easy that with very little supervision from me, our 13 year old daughter made them to go with dinner last week and they were delicious!

5 cups flour
1/4 cup sugar
3 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 package dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water
1 cup shortening
2 cups buttermilk

Sift dry ingredients. Cut in shortening. Dissolve yeast in warm water and add with buttermilk to dry ingredients. Mix well. Roll out between 1/4" and 1/2" thick. Cut out and bake on a greased (or parchment lined) baking sheet at 400 degrees for about 15 minutes. The cut out biscuits can be refrigerated or frozen. If frozen, let thaw and rise before baking.