Polish Sausage Potato Soup

I was fortunate to work at a place that helped the needy. I believe that, as humans, it's important that we help others out that can't help themselves. Unfortunately, now most people are only looking out for themselves which is very sad.
I worked at a non-profit church that provided help for recovering addicts and people who were homeless. I cooked meals for these people and enjoyed cooking for them. Most of these people didn't have a place to have a hot meal. I served hundreds of people a day and some of the people were very appreciative of the food and would often come and thank us for providing a good, hot meal. I wanted them to eat well, but sometimes the boss withheld certain food from them, and I felt that was wrong.
We had received steaks for donation once, and the boss decided the staff would eat the steaks and the shelter folks would have potato soup. Potato soup was the Monday meal served with a sandwich and salad. Since we had to serve so many people, we had to fix a really quick version of the soup to have enough for everyone. I would like to share my version of that recipe.


Ingredients
4 to 5 potatoes
1 lb polish sausage (ham if you prefer ham)
1 to 2 cups instant potato spuds
2 cups milk
2 tbsp butter
½ cup heavy cream
1 onion
2 to 3 stalks celery
1 Tbsp thyme
1 Tbsp chives
1 Tbsp parsley
Salt and white pepper
Peel the potatoes and cut into chunks and wash. Put the potatoes into a saucepan and add the milk and heavy cream and plenty of butter. Salt and pepper the milk potato mixture. Meanwhile, chop the onion and celery and sauté in a skillet until tender. Add the onion and celery to the potato mixture and stir. Cut up the polish sausage into 1 inch chunks and add to soup. Season the soup with the thyme and chives. Some people like using flour as a thickener for their potato soup; we used boxed instant potatoes to thicken our soup because we had so much of it. One cup is probably enough but add more if it is too thin. If you have too much instant potato in it, just thin it out with more milk. Stir the soup mixture together until you reach the desired consistency you want to make. Top soup with parsley and serve with a ham sandwich.