Sausage, Kale, and White Bean Soup

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.

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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:

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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:

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

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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… 

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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:

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

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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

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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:

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

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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).

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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.

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And dinner was served my friends!

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

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

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

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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!

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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

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Crackamole

I have a confession.  My mother is the Grinch.

She hates Christmas presents…

Gets really mad at her children for buying her Christmas presents….

And she’s as cuddly as a cactus, as charming as an eel….

Justttttt kidding!  Mwah hah hahhhhhhhhhh Smile

My Mom does, in fact, hate when her kids buy Christmas presents for her.  So this year, I channeled my inner third grader, and whipped up a homemade gift for the Madre:

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Strength Training & a Breakfast Sandwich

Last spring, I found a new love in running, and shortly thereafter I found out I have crappy knees that can’t handle too much impact.

Sadness…   Sad smile

Then, a few months back, I joined a gym.. That’s right, a gym.  And since then I’ve pretty much become BFF’s with the elliptical.  Feeling like a hamster is better than feeling like a sloth.  Am I right?

While it feels good to get some cardio in during the week, I noticed I’ve been feeling kind of weak lately.  Slightly feeble.  (could be the cold weather?)  Plus my posture has definitely declined in the past couple of years, and that is not a trend I’d like to continue on.

With all this weighing on my mind, in my down time over the past few weeks I’ve been working on putting together my first-ever strength training routine.  I’ve NEVER EVER been into weightlifting or any of the machines at the gym.  It’s just, well, too complicated.  Plus, I’m a numbers gal.  If I can’t see the numbers adding away right in front of my face, I feel like I’m not accomplishing anything.

So one morning, I tried out a few different exercises I found in the pile of fitness magazines I’ve been hoarding in my office and was immediately discouraged.  I just really didn’t know what I was doing, I had no plan of attack, and it felt like a big fat waste of time.

Well that is until I woke up the next morning and literally had to lift my legs out of the bed because they were so sore.  Perhaps it is possible that doing these silly strength training moves DOES actually impact your body…

Perhaps.

The next day, I went through ALL of the fitness magazines I’ve been accumulating over the past year and snipped out the strength-training exercises that looked promising.  Using this data, I pieced together the exercises I actually understood and/or those that appeared somewhat feasible and that could be done in the comfort of my own home…

Thennnnn I found images and instructions for each exercise and then decided to take things to a whole new level of crazy by organizing all the data into a PowerPoint presentation.

What?  You don’t put your strength training workouts into PowerPoint?

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Open-mouthed smile

After ALL of this research and organization, I had about 30 exercises but still no plan of attack.  I knew what the moves looked like, how to do them, and… well, that was about it.  So I sent my PowerPoint to the BF, who has a heck of a lot more experience in this area than I do, and asked him to please help me because I’m to the point of extreme frustration even though I had found pictures for each exercise, detailed descriptions, and picked out a really pretty color scheme!!!!

Hehe…

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Pretty, right?

Luckily, he obliged and did help and also did agree that it was a pretty color scheme….  (your darn tootin it’s pretty) all while I got to work on breakfast!

FINALLY!!

Cue the turkey pepperoni breakfast sandwich please!

Easy peasy, I tell ya.  This is 1 egg seasoned with S&P topped with 4 slices turkey pepperoni and 1 tbsp reduced fat Mexican cheese:

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My cheese was being stubborn and would not melt, so I popped a lid on for a bit to coerce it.

Mellllltttttt I say!

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Then I slid the egg onto a toasted whole grain English muffin and added some Ketchup and some Franks Red Hot:

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How ridiculously good does this look?

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Mmmmmmmm….

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Get in my belly.

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Smash em together:

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Annnnddd the sandwich was gone 13 seconds later.

Stats on the sandwich:  221 calories, 31g carbs, 9g fat, 15g protein, 8g fiber

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Baked Spaghetti (Squash)

When I was trying to decide what my belly wanted for dinner, it didn’t take me long to start salivating at the idea of some oven baked pasta with some melty cheese and garlic bread. 

Ohhhh yes.

I’m kind of obsessed with spaghetti squash these days, so any time I’m looking to cure a pasta craving in a healthful way, it’s my go-to-gourd.  Okkkk… so it’s a squash, not a gourd (and yes I googled it).

I can remember being a young teenager and watching my mom scrape out spaghetti squash as the rest of the family piled mounds and mounds of traditional spaghetti noodles on our plates.  Back then, I didn’t get it.  And, I was wayyyyyy to stubborn to even taste the squash.  Even when my mom swore up and down it tasted good, I wanted NOTHING to do with it.

Ohhhhh how the tables turn.

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Over the past year or so, spaghetti squash has become a weekly staple in my meal planning.  I’ve made it with turkey, chicken, sausage, veggies, chili… I even tried to use it as a pizza crust once, though that didn’t turn out nearly as well as I had hoped.  One thing I’ve never tried is using spaghetti squash to make an oven-baked pasta dish.  Tonight was the night my friends!

First up, I preheated the oven to 375 degrees.  I oh-so-carefully sliced the spaghetti squash in half lengthwise, scooped out the seeds, then sprinkled on some salt and pepper.  I put the squash halves cut side down on a cookie sheet that I had sprayed with cooking spray.  Into the oven for 30 minutes (for a smaller squash, check for doneness after 20 minutes).

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Meanwhile, I cooked up 4 ounces of 99% fat free turkey breast in a small skillet.  Once the turkey was white, I tossed the turkey onto a plate to hang out. 

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Meanwhile, I chopped up 4 baby bella mushrooms and some red onion and minced up 3 cloves of garlic and sautéed in the same skillet I used for the turkey.

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Once the veggies were soft and onions were caramelized, I added 1 cup of Nature’s Basket Garlic tomato sauce, tossed the turkey back in, and then seasoned everything up with some garlic powder, dried oregano, red pepper flakes, black pepper, and onion powder. 

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I let the sauce simmer on low heat for about 10 minutes.

Around that time  the spaghetti squash was done, so I used a fork to scrape out all the squash leaving the squash strands in the skin rather than dumping onto a plate.

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Next, I tossed 1/2 of the sauce onto each of the squash halves, then topped each with 1 lite babybel cheese round that I had roughly chopped up in my food processor.

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Spaghetti squash + yum-o sauce + babybel

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Into the 400 degree oven for about 7 minutes (until the cheese was mellllllty!):

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For my “garlic bread” I sliced up half of a ciabatta roll, and topped each half with a couple squirts of butter spray, garlic powder, onion powder, dried oregano, and a bit of parmesan cheese.  Then I popped them into the oven for five minutes until the cheese was melted and the bread was crisp

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Xtreme amount of grub:

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Strike that… Xtreme amount of DELICIOUS grub:

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You know that look Homer Simpson gets when he sees a doughnut?  You know, eyes rolled back into the head and quivering lips with drool running down?  That’s how I look when I look at this picture:

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WOWZA.

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Stats on one half of the baked spaghetti squash with 1/2 of the meat sauce and cheesy goodness:  281 calories, 35 g carbs, 7g fat, 26g protein, 8g fiber.

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Mary’s Special Eggs

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.

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

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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

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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.

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At that point, you pour on the egg mixture:

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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,

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then toss in the cooked turkey sausage:

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And some more veggies!

  • 1 diced tomato, seeded
  • 2 cups spinach thinly sliced

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Into the pan:

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

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Soooo yummy.

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

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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

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