cook: tuscan bean soup

While reviewing the recipe for Arroz con Pollo, I also spied this baked beans recipe, which I made instead into soup.                  

Luckily I had cooked a broth with chicken bones, onion, leek, and celery scraps over the weekend. And also saw this can of Italian cranberry beans in the cupboard, but didn't have a fennel bulb and so made a run to the grocery store.              

 

I chopped a fennel bulb, an onion bulb, a few stalks of celery, and cloves of garlic. I had cooked Italian sausage the week before, but decided to add more to it--a spicy sausage too. I went into the herb bed to snip sage, rosemary and thyme and chopped them finely.    

And then the sautéing and sweating of the onions in a little butter and olive oil along with the herbs. Next the fennel, celery, and garlic.                            

Next the raw Italian sausage and herbs to sauté and sweat (pinches of salt help) for 5 minutes and then the can of beans and bone broth.   

I let it simmer, but it needed more beans I thought and looked for cannellini in my pantry. Found it and it doubled the volume of soup(and had to use my bigger pot) which I boiled for a couple hours.

It looked done and hearty and tasted pretty delicious.               

I poured the soup into jars, and I've meals ready for eating when I’m too lazy to cook.