Cooler Weather = One Pot Cooking

I made the best soup ever last night!  If you like Olive Garden's Pasta Fagioli, I'm telling you, this will have to be what's cooking on your stove for dinner tomorrow.

Brown 1 and 1/2 pounds ground beef in a dutch oven or large pan.

Drain off fat and add:

 I chopped onion

3 carrots, chopped

4 stalks of celery, chopped

2-16 oz cans of diced tomatoes

1-16 oz can of red kidney beans

1- 16 oz can of white beans

1-26oz pkg beef stock

1-20 oz jar spaghetti sauce

3 tsp oregeno

2 tsp parsley

2 tsp pepper

Here's the really great thing....  You can cook it on your stove top over medium low heat for about 30 minutes and then add the macaroni that you cooked in boiling water on another burner of your stove top... 

OR

you can put everything in your crock pot on low for 6 hours or so and then you can go to work or shopping or exercise class or the laundry room (if you dare).  Thirty minutes before you call the kids to the table, stir the dry macaroni into the soup brewing in your crock pot, pour yourself a beverage, put your feet up and take five (or ten or twenty).

I served this delicious dish in big bowls with fresh fruit and hot fresh bread on the side.  He-man had two helpings.  Not that his waistline needed a double dose, but it was too dog gone good to resist.

14. I am grateful for the aroma of soup simmering on the stove.

If you are reading this in the morn I hope your day is one that makes you want a second helping.  If you are reading this in the evening I hope your day gave you a taste of "the best ever".  And whether it be morn or night I hope you are warm, safe and well fed.