The Wholesome Steward

It was a beautiful Sunday Morning! We had one of the kids’ cousins spend the night with us. My sweet husband made pancakes as he sometimes does on the weekends! I was a bit flustered because when they woke up, they got right into chaos and put scrapes of paper everywhere, and dumped out various containers all over the place. So, I made them clean it and grounded them from crafts for the next week. I don’t mind a mess that’s part of life, but this was intentional. They cut all the pieces and took them all over the house, and tossed them up in the air to spread everywhere! So we talked and I stood over them keeping everyone on task and just commenting on what a disappointing mess this was, and when they complained I reminded them that they made the choices to do this so they needed to deal with the consequences and take responsibility for their actions and clean this up! I also turned on some worship music and prayed internally for peace, and calm! My wonderful husband agreed to cook pancakes and sausage while I kept them on track.

After breakfast, it was about time for church. I asked sweet husband to take them to church and let me stay home with little baby. Service is right during his nap time, and I always end up in the basement, feeding him and sitting, reading the bible on my phone while he sleeps. I just didn’t feel like I was gonna get more in the basement than I would at home. After that morning, I just needed to take a break! They go to church, and the house is quiet. I spend some nice time with the Lord and reset! When they come home, my husband says he brought someone home to have lunch with us. I wasn’t really planning lunch. I was kinda just going to make simple sandwiches! But that’s not what I want to make our guests. I started thinking about dinner. I was going to make pot roast for dinner, could that work? I don’t really have the time I want to give it. Then it occurred to me! I had some potatoe soup base I canned in the pantry… that’s just the thing! So I pull out two jars, a pound of sage sausage, an extra jar of home canned broth, and get the 3 jars in a pot to start warming up, plus a decent splash or half and half, maybe a quarter of a cup! I quickly go back to the pantry and grab a can of corn and mix that into the soup as well. Next, I  get the sausage in a frying pan and pour in a quarter to half inch of water, then start smash spreading with a whisk, which I have found to be the best ground meat crumbler! I can’t forget to pull out some cheese and start gratting it. I continue to go back to the sausage to smash, toss, and crumble until brown. At this point, the soup is heating up nicely, so I add about a quarter to half a cup of flour to the sausage along with some garlic herb. I stir constantly till the flour has soaked up all the grease. Then keep stirring for a few minutes to cook the flour yet keep from burning it. Then I plop the whole lot of that down in the soup base. I let the soup hydrate the flour without stirring for another minute or two. Then I go to one side of that flour sausage blob and slowly start mixing it in little by little. This process makes the soup have a nice thick base! At first, I mixed it in too quickly, and it wasn’t very thick, so I just kept mixing, and it thickened back up. And lastly, I added salt and lemon pepper to taste! And it was ready to serve, and it took me less than 30 minutes!