UPDATE: Beginning Tuesday January 21st, I have a new e-book available. It's on sale for just $3.97 (regular price $9.97) until February 4th, 2014 and this recipe is included. It's a Community Cookbook. There are 52 winter soup recipes and 24 are GAPS Legal as written (more easily modified). Check my sales page to learn more: Winter Soups.

My mom is getting a little bit better each day. As you know if you are doing GAPS, or traveling on any healing journey, it doesn't happen overnight. The process is often two steps forward and one step backward. Mom wishes she felt good enough to help by cooking the dinner meal but she's not quite there so every day she asks me if I know what I'm going to make for dinner (I definitely need to get more organized!).

I tend to make the same few meals, usually burgers with lettuce buns, a pot of soup, some variation Curried Chicken, and a salad almost weekly, but I've had to change up on some of the meals since Mom has some digestion problems, trouble chewing raw foods and although she has always liked them, she no longer tolerates spicy foods. She is loving all the foods that we eat and has enjoyed looking through my cookbook Beyond Grain & Dairy. She raved and raved about the Cauliflower Crust Pizza that I made last night. She's been on a gluten- and mostly grain-free diet for many decades, and hasn't had pizza in probably 25 years so that was fun.

One day a couple of weeks ago (Mom has been here a month now!) I had hamburger thawing, but wasn't sure how I was going to cook it. If Mom wasn't eating with us, I would probably have made Taco Salad but lettuce doesn't seem to agree with her. Mom asked if she could start it cooking on the stove early in the day and it ended up cooking severals hours until it was extremely tender. I'd asked her to put in a bell pepper and onion. Later after I got home from work we put in tomato paste, diced tomatoes, garlic and some spices.

It was delicious! It tastes like spaghetti sauce but is more like soup so that's why we called it Delicious Spaghetti Sauce Soup! 🙂  We loved it so much that we've been making it once a week. The second batch we put in the crock pot because I figured it would do well in the slow cooker, since we were basically slow cooking on the stove top. I really like using the crock pot in hot weather because I can put it outside on the porch. This saves the house from getting heated up and the air conditioner doesn't have to work double time just to cool everything down again.

This recipe is very simple and quick, and the crock pot does the hard work! For this “soup” we have been mixing in leftover vegetables, or spaghetti squash. In the photo above you can see the sliced mushrooms. It is also quite wonderful all by itself!

Spaghetti Sauce Soup

• 3 pounds ground beef (we used 80%)
• 1 bell pepper, diced
• 1 large onion, diced
• 1 cup water or broth
• 2 cloves [affiliate link] garlic, crushed
• 6 ounces tomato paste
• 14 ounces diced tomatoes
• 1 teaspoon sweet basil
• 1 teaspoon Italian seasoning
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper [affiliate link]
• 2 teaspoons Celtic salt
• Optional: 1/4 teaspoon (this is my Amazon affiliate link) Original Frank's Redhot Cayenne Pepper Sauce
• Optional: Steamed Vegetables (for example, any or all of the following: cauliflower, zucchini, mushrooms, onions [affiliate link] or carrots) or Baked Spaghetti Squash

1.  Place ground beef into crock pot with bell pepper, onion and water (or broth).
2. Cook on low for at least 7 hours.
3. Turn off crock pot and add remaining ingredients. We have not found it necessary to continue heating after adding the tomatoes and tomato paste.
4. Mix in warm steamed vegetables, if desired.

That's it! We let the dish set for a few minutes before serving.