White Bean and Spinach Soup

Today is a soup day.  You know the kind of day - cold (well 50's in So Cal is cold) overcast, with threatening rain.  Just what one needs to fill the belly and feel all warm and fuzzy inside.  Added boner with this soup is that after sugar binging and binging in general the last 5 weeks since Thanksgiving its time to add some serious roughage and clean out the pipes.  This is just the soup to take care of it all.

I'm a total cheater when it comes to soup.  I do shortcuts like canned broth and stocks...far easier than the hours it takes to make from scratch.  The nice part is there is no bones to pick, meat to shred or whatever.  Pour and go with a taste like you did all the preceding steps and slaved away for a few hours.  Life is good with shortcuts, got that martha?

White Bean and Spinach Soup

• 1 lb Italian Sausage
  
• 1 large yellow onion - diced
  
• 2 carrots sliced - diced
  
• 1 T minced garlic
  
• 1 t ground pepper
  
• 1/2 c coarse chopped basil (2T dried)
  
• 2 32 oz low sodium chicken stock
  
• 2  15 oz cans white kidney beans - drained
  
• 1 15 oz can diced tomatoes 
  
• 1 12oz bag spinach
  
• olive oil
  
• salt
  
• Parmesan
  

Pour enough olive oil to just coat the bottom of a large stock pot.  Add sausage and brown on all sides until dark and crusty about 5 minutes per side.  Remove sausage, do not drain fat from pot. Slice sausage and reserve.

Add onion, carrot and fresh ground pepper to the hot pot.  Stir occasionally until onions are starting to caramelize, about 10 minutes.  Add garlic and cook 1 minute stirring constantly so as not to burn garlic.

Add sliced sausage, tomatoes with liquid, broth, beans  and basil.  Add salt to taste.  Cover and simmer 30 minutes.

Add the end of the simmer increase heat and add spinach.  Cook about 3-4 minutes until the spinach has wilted.  Serve piping hot with fresh grated Parmesan on top and good dipping bread on the side.

Note:try to get low sodium varieties of broth/stock.  Resist temptation to salt until all the ingredients have been combined as the broth/stocks can be very salty and adding your own prior could be really too salty to enjoy.