Sausage, Pasta & Bean Soup - Cousin Candy's New Year's Day Recipe!

• 2 small cans tomato sauce
• 4 links sweet Italian sausage
• 2 links hot Italian sausage
• 3 cans cannellini beans
• 2-3 cans chicken broth
• 6 stalks finely chopped celery
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1/2 lb. ditalini (or other small pasta – I used elbows because it's the only small whole wheat pasta I could find in the store this week!)

- Chop up celery & garlic and lightly run through the food processor to finely chop it.

- Take sausage out of casing and crumble, saute in your large cooking pot in olive oil until cooked, drain and set aside.

- Saute celery and garlic in same pot, cook until celery is soft and add sausage back to pot.

- Mash 2 cans of beans in the liquid with your food processor and add to pot.

- Add last can of beans un-mashed with liquid.

- Add chicken broth and 2 cans of tomato sauce and cook over low heat.

- You can either add your pasta now, uncooked right into the soup (the way I do it), or you can cook the pasta separately and when you are ready to eat and spoon the soup over the top. If you do add the pasta right to the soup it will take about 30 minutes, don't cook too long or you will have mushy pasta.

-Top with grated cheese & enjoy!

Soup freezes well, just be careful with noodles, because they expand and soak up liquid, if this happens just add some more chicken broth to it!