Sausage and White Bean Soup

It's frigging freezing people! Look my toes are turning black from a lack of warmth {hee, hee}.   I think I have frostbite!

Seriously though, I think the current conditions are making me delirious!  I'll prove my point below.  I went to get my nails done today for an upcoming holiday party.  Let me share with you that my nails have not been painted in a looooooooong time.  At least 5 years.  This is because the silly polish never lasts for more than one day which is so annoying.  So the last time I had a pedicure the girls were telling me about a gel nail polish that will last for 2 or 3 weeks and it is not damaging to the nails like acrylic.  Really, now that I'm going to have to try?  I dream about having long sexy painted nails, but that's just not my reality.  I am way to hard on my hands for my own nails to grow long and acrylic is just so damaging I can't stand it.  Maybe this gel nail polish will do the trick!

Anyways, I went in today to get done up and hit a snag.  The gel nails come in limited colors.  So I had to pick a color for my nails AND a color for my toes.  Just picking one color would have been so much simpler!  Since my dress is a deep eggplant color I picked the only dark non red color that was available for the nails.  And then I picked a dark purple color for my toes.  Yes I said purple.  Do those toes look purple?  Have I gone color blind due to the freezing cold?  Usually I'm pretty good with colors.  What happened, LOL?   I swear that polish only looked one shade darker than the gel nail polish in the bottle.  

Oh well.  I figure only my big toe will be peeping through my shoes and I'll have black hose on anyways.  No one's going to know the difference.  And seriously only someone with a foot fetish would notice anyways {giggles, giggles, giggles}

So to warm up my brain and stop the delirium I want to share a recipe I saw and slightly adapted from Mommy's Kitchen for Sausage and Bean Soup.  

{ I promise to start sharing some Christmas goodies next week.  If I have a bunch of goodies around the house I'll never fit into my dress! Which would be horrible! }

Ahhh, my brain is thawing out just looking at the photo!

PRINTABLE RECIPE

Here's what you'll need:

2 links of spicy Italian sausage, casings removed 

1 tablespoon of olive oil

1/2 cup chopped onion

1 clove garlic minced

1 teaspoon fresh rosemary or 1/2 teaspoon dried rosemary

1/2 teaspoon dried basil

1/4 teaspoon black pepper

15 ounce can northern beans, drained and rinsed

4 to 5 cups of chicken broth

14.5 ounce can of Italian diced tomatoes

1/2 cup ditalini pasta

1/4 cup parmesan or romano cheese

Heat olive oil in a pan.  Remove casings from the sausage and brown until almost done.

Add in the onion and garlic and continue to cook until the sausage is browned.

Add in the chicken broth, tomatoes, beans, and spices.  Simmer for 15 minutes.

Note - don't use dried rosemary leaves!  I threw this in before I noticed I had picked up the wrong jar.  Use dried crushed rosemary.  This way you won't feel like you're eating grass in your soup.  I tell you it's a wonder I can cook somedays.

Add in the pasta and simmer 7 more minutes.

Sprinkle each bowl with a little cheese and serve with crackers or crusty Italian bread.

       

Hopefully if you're freezing, like me,  this will thaw you out and allow you to think straight :-)!

Enjoy!

Shannon