So dinner is done and I have to say, it was quite tasty. I followed my plan mentioned in the prior post and chopped and sauteed the zucchini and squash in the same pan I browned and cooked the sausage in and I think that really added a lot of flavor to the dish. Served it with some (store bought) garlic bread and it made a very nice, filling, and moderately healthy meal. And I have enough leftovers for about 4 more meals even after sending 2 servings home with Jeremy.

I also ended up making the vegetable stock today as well as my started-off-as-minestrone-ended-up-more-a-vegetable soup. I didn’t have enough onion based on various stock recipes I’d found so I walked over to Trader Joe’s for a small bag of onions and quartered 3 of those, together with the half onion I had left over from the soup as the start of the stock.

Veggies Before Veggies After
Vegetables for stock, before roasting Vegetables for stock, after roasting

I then third-ed all of the remaining celery and carrots on the bias (to get more surface area exposed) and peeled and separated a half head of garlic and tossed it all together with a bit of olive oil, salt and pepper and stuck it in a 425 degree oven for about half an hour to get all kinds of good roasted flavors out of the veggies first.
Once they were ready I added just enough water to cover all of the vegetables to my big stock pot, added just about every dried herb I had in my pantry (rosemary, thyme, herbs de provance, bay leaves, random herb packet from Fresh Market, whole peppercorns and kosher salt) and got everything up to a simmer and let it go for an hour (more than that and, according to the internet, the vegetables get mushy and become bitter).

After the hour was up I made a quick ice bath in my kitchen sink (much to the chagrin of the cats, pouring ice into a stainless steel sink is very loud), strained the stock into a metal bowl and cooled things off as quickly as possible then divided the stock up into ice cube trays and a quart plastic container for later use (very tasty as base for rice or risotto), also added a bit of it to the minestrone as it was a bit low on broth after adding all of the vegetables and sausage. Overall, the cooking day was a success I think and all of the photos are posted on my Flickr page.