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Sausage, Kale, and White Bean Soup

January 18, 2011 6 Comments

This time of year, my absolute favorite thing to make for my work-week lunches is soup. I’m sure you all can relate to the need to feed your belly warm comforting foods once winter weather rolls in. Unfortunately, the last few soups I’ve tried haven’t been very exciting. I made a chicken taco soup and came to the realization that corn just needs to stay on the cob and keep the heck out of my soup bowl. I also made chicken pot pie soup. I love chicken pot pie… but the best part of the pot pie is the flaky crust and by turning the pot pie into a pot pieless soup I had effectively cooked up a big batch of blah.

So, I’ve been searching high and low for a new soup to try and finally came across a promising recipe for White Bean Soup with Kale and Chorizo in the November 2010 issue of Cooking Light. It sounded pretty darn delicious to me, and even though I’d never tried Kale I figured I’d give it a shot.

I’ve never had chorizo either (though I’m sure I’d love it), and I happened to have some leftover Honeysuckle Hot Italian Turkey sausage I wanted to use up… So the starting point for my soup was two of these links:

I used a knife to remove the casings on the sausage, then tossed them into a soup pot that I’d heated up over a medium high flame and sprayed down with some cooking spray.

I let the sausage do it’s thang for a bit, stirring occasionally. No need to worry about the hard brown bits on the bottom of the pan – these will turn into little nuggets of flavor in just a bit:

Once the sausage was no longer pink, I added four large cloves of minced garlic along with my beloved onion:

I seasoned this mixture up with some S&P.

I would have been more than happy (elated, actually) to have eaten this simple combo for dinner…

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t grab a spoon and savor a few bites of the sausage onion goodness straight out of the pot. Heaven!

Once the onions were nice and soft, I added about 1 cup of fat-free low sodium chicken broth to the pan and used a wooden spoon to sort of “massage” the brown bits off the bottom of the pan.

Work it….. Wooorkkkkk ittttttt. Winking smile

Then I tossed in the rest of the stock in a box (approx 3 more cups), 2 cans drained and rinsed cannellini beans, and another 1/2 tsp black pepper:

I let the soup jive on the stove for a bit, while I got to tackling the kale monster in my sink:

I’ve never had kale before. For those of you who haven’t had it—it’s kind of like broccoli and spinach had a baby… A really large overgrown baby who was a little rough around the edges. You follow? Smile

Luckily, my years of dedicated Rachael Ray 30 Minute Meals watching had trained me how to handle this kale monster.

Fill the sink up with water, drop in the kale, give it a good swish and let all the gritty bits drain to the bottom.
Dry the kale.
THEN, hold the kale stem in one hand and slide the leaves of the kale through the fingers of your other hand (to rip the kale leaves off the tough stems).
Give it a rough chop.

Once the kale was ready, I dropped about 6 cups into the soup:

I gave it a good stir and let the hot soup wilt down the kale:

One nice thing about kale is it doesn’t get super mooshy and limp in soup like spinach does (not that I don’t love spinach in soup – the kale just adds some welcomed texture to the pot).

Once the kale was worked in, I popped a lid on the pot and let it simmer away for 15 minutes or so while I cleaned up the kitchen.

And dinner was served my friends!

I topped my soup off with 1 teaspoon of shredded parmesan cheese:

This pot of soup made 5 good-size servings, which was plenty for me because I wanted to have some ciabatta for dunking!

If you wanted your bowl to overfloweth with soup – well, then I’d say the pot serves 4.

Regardless of how many people the pot is serving, this pot SERVES it up. DELICIOUS, EASY, AND HEALTHY! That’s the trifecta in my book!

Now the only test remaining is how well this soup freezes… stayed tuned on that!

Sausage, Kale, and White Bean Soup Ingredients List:

2 links Honeysuckle Turkey Sausage, casings removed
1 medium size onion, chopped
4 large cloves of garlic, minced
4 cups (1 box) Swansons fat free reduced sodium chicken broth
2 cans cannellini beans, rinsed and drained
6 cups Kale, chopped
Black pepper!

Stats on 1/5 of the pot o’ soup: 236 Calories, 38g carbs, 4g fat, 20g protein, 10g fiber

Recipes

Mary’s Special Eggs

January 10, 2011 9 Comments

It’s no secret that I love eggs for breakfast. Every. Day.

Unfortunately, I just don’t have the time to whip myself up some eggs before work every day, so I like to cook a big ole batch on Sunday night. I was getting a little burnt out on my normal scrambled eggs and broccoli (not to mention the fact that my coworkers were getting sick of the broccoli stinking up the microwave), so I decided to switch things up a bit.

And so evolved Mary’s Special Eggs!

For a 5-serving batch, I start off with 2 links Jennie O’ Hot Turkey Sausage, casings removed. I pop those into a hot skillet and cook until no longer pink while crumbling with a spatula.

Once the sausage is finished cooking, I remove it from the pan and set aside while I get to work on the veggies.

In the same skillet (which should still be hot), toss in

A handful of sliced up baby bella mushrooms
1/2 cup diced red onion
2 cloves garlic

Season these guys up with salt and pepper, and let them cook over medium heat until soft.

Meanwhile, get to crackin the eggs. For 5 servings I go with:

5 whole eggs
10 egg whites
Splash of water

Give those a good whisk. The onions and mushrooms should be softened up by now and looking oh so tasty.

At that point, you pour on the egg mixture:

Season these up with S&P, and as the eggs begin to cook, use your spatula to scrape the cooked eggs off the bottom of the pan. Continue this process until the eggs are nearly cooked through,

then toss in the cooked turkey sausage:

And some more veggies!

1 diced tomato, seeded
2 cups spinach thinly sliced

Into the pan:

Then I just use the spatula to fold everything in and finish cooking the eggs through:

Soooo yummy.

Once the eggs are done cooking I divide them up into 5 containers—and there’s Breakfast #1 for the workweek!

I like to break my breakfasts up into 2 small breakfasts rather than one large meal, so I typically follow the eggs up with a serving of oatmeal about 2 hours afterward. On the weekends I like to take a serving of the eggs, pop them on a low carb tortilla with some Franks Red Hot, and give them a nice grill on the George Foreman. Trust me, it’s one delicious (HEALTHY!) breakfast burrito!

Stats on 1 Servings of my Special Eggs: 189 Calories, 9g carbs, 9g fat, 23g protein, 1g fiber

Recipes

Mary’s Special Eggs

January 10, 2011 10 Comments

It’s no secret that I love eggs for breakfast. Every. Day.

And so evolved Mary’s Special Eggs!

For a 5-serving batch, I start off with 2 links Jennie O’ Hot Turkey Sausage, casings removed. I pop those into a hot skillet and cook until no longer pink while crumbling with a spatula.

Once the sausage is finished cooking, I remove it from the pan and set aside while I get to work on the veggies.

In the same skillet (which should still be hot), toss in

A handful of sliced up baby bella mushrooms
1/2 cup diced red onion
2 cloves garlic

Season these guys up with salt and pepper, and let them cook over medium heat until soft.

Meanwhile, get to crackin the eggs. For 5 servings I go with:

5 whole eggs
10 egg whites
Splash of water

Give those a good whisk. The onions and mushrooms should be softened up by now and looking oh so tasty.

At that point, you pour on the egg mixture:

Season these up with S&P, and as the eggs begin to cook, use your spatula to scrape the cooked eggs off the bottom of the pan. Continue this process until the eggs are nearly cooked through,

then toss in the cooked turkey sausage:

And some more veggies!

1 diced tomato, seeded
2 cups spinach thinly sliced

Into the pan:

Then I just use the spatula to fold everything in and finish cooking the eggs through:

Soooo yummy.

Once the eggs are done cooking I divide them up into 5 containers—and there’s Breakfast #1 for the workweek!

Stats on 1 Servings of my Special Eggs: 189 Calories, 9g carbs, 9g fat, 23g protein, 1g fiber

Recipes

Jambalaya. Jealous?

November 1, 2010 9 Comments

Every time I think of New Orleans, I hear the Zatarain’s rice commercial in my head. You know… Zatarain’s! (Said with much sass and flavor while jazz music wails in the background). Even before my trip to the Big Easy, I had this funny mental quirk.

This thought popped into my head tonight when I began to think about what to make for dinner. I was presented with the following challenge: what do you make when you’ve got leftover meats out the wazoo?

JAMBALAYA of course! It seems like ages since I last made Jambalaya! Well at least four months anyway. I had some chicken leftover from last week’s lunch and the turkey sausage was leftover from my Zuppa Tuscana…

Lucky for me, I keep frozen shrimp in the freezer at all times in case of emergency. So whipping together a 3-meat entre was easy peasy tonight!

3 meats, one dish:

The meats were ready to roll, so I heated the oven up to 400 degrees and got to choppin 2 roma tomatoes, 1/2 a white onion, and 1 green pepper:

I tossed the veggies into a bowl with:

1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp onion powder
2 tsp minced garlic

I gave everything a good toss, then added:

1 cup brown rice
1 cup low sodium chicken broth

I intended on using 1.5 cups of brown rice, but I ran out! Ooops! That’s what happens when I grocery shop without taking inventory first! Dangit!

I divided the mix up evenly among three foil packets that I had sprayed down with some nonstick cooking spray:

One for my dinner, one for my lunch, and one for the BF’s lunch because I’m clearly dabomb.com.

I popped the packets into the oven for 30 minutes, and VOOOOILLLAAA!

Oh so spicy, and ohhhhh so delicious!

Yes, the jambalaya we had in New Orleans (and again) was a teensy bit tastier than my healthified version, but I’d like to see NOLA try and stack up to these stats:

Stats on 1 serving: 314 calories, 33g carbs, 9g fat, 27g protein, 3g fiber

Jambalaya Ingredients List (serves 3):

6 large shrimp, tails removed
2 links Jennie-O Hot Turkey Sausage
3 ounces grilled chicken
1 green bell pepper
2 plum tomatoes
1/2 a white onion
2 cloves garlic
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp red pepper flakes
1/4 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/4 tsp onion powder
1 cup reduced sodium low fat chicken broth

Recipes

Zuppa Toscana

October 29, 2010 15 Comments

It’s hard to believe that I used to hate soup. Whaaaattt???? I hated them. And I mean all of them. I found soup unsatisfying and uncravable. I needed something with substance (and by substance I mean a big hunk of meat or a big hunk of bread).

How could I resist this beauty???

Nowadays the soup and salad combo is one of my favorites, especially this time of year. I love the contrast: a cool crunchy salad and hot comforting soup. I went to lunch with my coworkers last week and tried Zuppa Toscana for the first time. It was DELISH, and I knew I had to give it a shot.

So first off, what is Zuppa Toscana anyway? Tuscan soup… not exactly descriptive. Google tells me Zuppa Toscana is supposed to include sausage, bacon, greens, potatoes and cream. Sounds like a good starting point!

After some futher googlin I found a few recipes that looked pretty tasty and after some tweaking and Maryfications I ended up with some mighty tasty results!

First up, I took some help for my girl Jennie O’, and grabbed 3 hot turkey sausage links.

I ran a knife along the back of each sausage link to cut through the casing, then removed the sausage meat and discarded the casings

Once my skillet was nice and hot, I tossed the sausage in and used a spatula to break out the meat. When the sausage was no longer pink, I removed it from the skillet and set aside.

Next up, I heated up a soup pot, once hot I added one large diced yellow onion, 1 tablespoon minced garlic, 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp black pepper, and and 1.5 tsp red pepper flakes. I like it hot!

Glory in a pot:

Cook the onions until soft and translucent, then add 2 boxes of low-sodium fat free chicken broth (64 ounces). While you are waiting for the soup to come to a boil, slice up one large potato:

Bring the the soup to a boil, then add the sliced potatoes. Reduce to medium heat, and cook for about 20 minutes until the potatoes are fork tender. Next toss in the sausage and one cup of half and half.

Let the soup simmer away until everything is warmed through, and just before you are ready to serve it toss in 3 cups of spinach.

VOILA! Soup is served!

This soup was AWESOME. Only problem was my poor potatoes practically disintegrated in the soup. Next time I think I’ll chunk the potatoes rather than thinly slicing them.

Despite that potato problem, the soup was so tasty and it had a little kick which I loved! If you aren’t big on spicy foods, cut the red pepper flakes and black pepper back.

Serve with a delicious salad, of course!

Zuppa Toscana Ingredients List (makes 6 Servings)

3 links Jennie O’ Hot Turkey Sausage
1 large diced yellow onion
1 and 1/2 tsp crushed red pepper flakes
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 tsp black pepper
1 tablespoon minced garlic
64 ounces Chicken Broth Fat Free Reduced Sodium Chicken broth
1 large potato
1 cup half and half
3 cups fresh spinach

Stats on one serving Zuppa Toscana: 207 calories, 15g carbs, 10g fat, 14g protein, 2g fiber

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