Whatever you have chowder.

Made this chowder out of a bunch of leftovers and random stuff I had that looked like it might be at the end of it's life soon.  It turned out really really good though.  I made some whole wheat cheese muffins to go with it but I will have to say the muffins were not all that great, so I did not include the recipe here. I do like the idea of a savory cheese muffin with the soup though, so if you found a recipe you could try your hand at it.  

So I didn't have any sun dried tomatoes, but I had a billion tomatoes.  So I cut them up really thin, sprinkled them with olive oil and some herbs and put them in a 400 degree oven.  I used these in the muffins but they would be good in the soup too! 

I wanted to bake my potatoes and squash since I didn't want to boil them - loss of flavor and nutrients - and I didn't want to cook in them in the soup as I feel that always sets me up for failure as they take way too long to cook and usually end up being underdone or by the time they are done there is hardly any soup left since it's all soaked up in the potatoes. 

This is some butternut squash I also baked. I just put everything in with the tomatoes in the oven at the same time. 

This is what the tomatoes looked like when they got all done.  You could put them in some muffins like I did but I think it would be better in the soup. 

So to start I chopped up three tilapia fillets.  Tilapia is good because it's really low in fat and it has a very mild flavor, so if you aren't crazy about fish, you might consider tilapia as an option to get your fish in without the super fishy taste.  It still tastes a bit like fish - but I bet if you seasoned it enough you might not notice.  

I just salt and peppered it. 

I cooked it in a big pot with some garlic, chicken broth (which I no longer use because I found out the company lied when they said it had no msg in it), about 1/3 pound of italian turkey sausage and some olive oil.  

I added the seasonings I like to this type of thing.  I used dill (because of the fish), paprika, thyme, and rosemary.  You can use whatever you want.  I deglazed the pan with more chicken broth. 

I then added a little over 1/4 cup whole wheat flour.  

Mixed it into this paste. .. and then my phone died.  

So then I added a whole can of chicken broth (I ended up using two cans for this soup) and waited for it to thicken.  After that I added some evaporated milk (it added a really nice sweet flavor to the whole thing).  When I had it to just about the thickness I wanted I added some frozen peas and corn, followed by the potatoes and butternut squash.  At the end I sprinkled in some fresh parsley.  I tasted it and salted and peppered it until it tasted the best I thought it could.  Then I ate it.