Italian Sausage Soup

This is a very exciting soup...

Ingredients
1 pound Italian sausage (I used a pound and a half and then doubled the rest of the recipe)
2 clove garlic, minced
3 cups beef broth
1 (14.5 ounce) can Italian-style stewed tomatoes
1 sliced carrot
1 (14.5 ounce) can great Northern beans, undrained
2 small zucchini, cubed
2 cups spinach - packed, rinsed and torn
Salt and pepper to taste

In a large pot, brown sausage with garlic. Stir in broth, tomatoes and carrots, and season with salt and pepper. Simmer about 15 minutes

Stir in beans with liquid and zucchini. Simmer another 15 minutes, or until zucchini is tender.

Remove from heat, and add spinach. Cover, allowing the heat from the soup to cook the spinach leaves. Soup is ready to serve after 5 minutes.

I really enjoyed this soup. If you eat it alone, I'd say you'd only get 4 servings out of it. There are 425 calories per serving. There's a lot of fat in it, but you could reduce that if you used turkey Italian sausage. You get lots of yummy vegetables. 1 serving contains almost a third of your vitamin C and iron needs for the day and about half of your folate (a great thing if you're in a "delicate" condition, ahem). And 20 grams of protein per serving!

Delicious! Definitely my favorite soup I've made so far. It's going to be a good week!

Now all we need is Lisa's roll recipe...

Added October 7: This soup doesn't store really great. After a about 3 days the zucchini started getting really mushy and I picked it all out.