Sunday's Soup

I recently found this recipe for Tomato, Basil and Parmesan Soup on Pinterest. It looked interesting, so I decided to give it a try. I especially liked the fact that it was made in a crockpot. I did make a number of changes though. The basic ingredients are the same as the original recipe except for the addition of the chicken sausage. Well, you can read the original recipe and then you can compare it to what I've posted below and then decide what you would like to do :)

Rhonda's Version of Crockpot Tomato, Basil and Parmesan Soup

4 14 ounce cans fire roasted diced tomatoes
8 cups broth, chicken or vegetable, your choice
2 cups diced carrots
2 cups diced celery
1 cup diced onion
2 teaspoons dried oregano
2 Tablespoons Dried basil
1/2 cup butter
1 1/2 cups half and half
1 pound chicken sausage
salt and pepper to taste
leftover Parmesan rinds or 1 cup grated Parmesan Cheese

Saute onions in a little olive oil until golden. Remove casings from sausage and add to onions. Brown sausage. Add celery and carrots and continue to cook for about 5 minutes on a medium flame.
Combine tomatoes, broth, oregano and basil in a crockpot. Add sausage and onion mixture. I like to save the hard ends of Parmesan for soups. If you have some, add them now. If not, the grated Parmesan will be added later.
Cover and cook on low for 6 to 8 hours.
Before serving, melt butter and combine with flour. Stirring constantly, cook over a medium flame for approximately 5 minutes. The flour mixture will turn to a beautiful golden brown. Add to soup.
Warm half and half and then add to soup mixture. Add grated Parmesan cheese if you have not cooked the soup with the rinds.
Cover and cook on low for about 30 minutes, or until you are ready to serve. Remove Parmesan rinds before serving.

If you look at the original recipe, you will see that I basically doubled almost all of the ingredients with the exception of the onion, butter/flour mixture and the half and half. The end product is a hearty soup that is not heavy. I love being able to make up soups in my crockpot and have them cook all day. Such a nice and easy way to cook. We have guests coming from Italy at the end of this week, so I'm anxious to see what they think of the soup. They arrive rather late on Thursday, so I thought a soup dinner would be a nice welcome after a long journey.
Enjoy!