Hearty vegetable and meat soup

I had a big bag of vegetables sitting around. They have been left over from the tiny dishes prepared on spoons. Not all of them would have lasted a while longer, so I cleaned and chopped some root vegetables for a next dish and froze the vegetables. All the rest had to be done on the day.

The best way on a cold November day is preparing a hearty soup out of them. I went grocery shopping in the morning and bought to slices of beef shanks and a bit of raw bratwurst for sausage meat.

Use a big pot and start with the beef shanks, there will be a lot of dark foam building up on top of the soup. Just take a strainer spoon and get all this scum off, that makes for a clear soup later. It will take some time until all that is taken off. Then add carrots, onions, celery, cleriac and leek and the stems of parsley. Bay leaves and fresh lovage are good from the beginning. 

Put all the veggies in, that have a longer cooking time, the ones that get mushy, just add later together with the rice and the pasta.
You now have the time to take the sausage meat out of the casings and roll them into balls. When the beef is out, just get them in and let them cook for 5 min in the soup.

The beef shanks needed about 70 minutes cooking time. Take them out and let them cool down a bit so you can handle them. Cut off the meat and toss it back into the soup.
Finish with some fresh parsley.

The soup can be frozen or reheated a couple of times.

ingredients:
3,5 l water
salt
pepper
chili
2 beef shank slices -about 800 g
400 g sausages
onions
garlic
sprig onions
leek
carrots
celery
celeriac
potatoes
green asparagus
tomatoes
2 tbsp Tomato Paste
1/2 cup long grain rice
1/2 cup small soup pasta
3 bay leaves
2 lovage stems
parsley