Bean and Sausage Soup

It's Crockpot Wednesday again over at Dining with Debbie!!

I wasn't planning on posting this one, but after my boys ate it on day 2, I changed my mind. You see I really wasn't very impressed with it at all the night we had it, this is largely due to a few mishaps of my own. But, the leftovers, according to both boys, were absolutely delicious. So, it's on the keeper list, but we'll definitely be changing it up a bit!!

Here is what I used:

1 can each of black beans, pinto beans, and rotel tomatoes, thyme, spicy turkey sausage, 1 onion, 4 carrots, 3 stalks celery, and chicken broth - a lot of it, I think I used 52 oz, there is a smaller container behind that big one!!!

Now, here is what I think you actually need:

• Only keep 1 carrot and 1 celery and throw them in the food processor with the onion - this way you get their flavor but you don't have to really notice it in the soup, because these veggies just don't seem right for this soup - BUT the flavor was great the next day, so I wouldn't cut them out completely like I originally wanted to do. 
• Add minute rice - about a cup is what I ended up adding - 5-10 minutes before serving. 
• Use about half the amount of chicken broth - really just enough to cover everything up, this was way too much broth - but I think that's because it's a WW recipe and they want to fill you up on liquid.. that just doesn't go over well in our house! 

Back to assembling the soup though, chop up your veggies, or take my advice and throw them in a food processor which is exactly what I'll be doing next time:

And then throw all ingredients into the crockpot. I didn't measure the thyme, just gave a good sprinkle, and I drained both cans of beans. Also, for the sausage, instead of cutting it up, I just squeezed them out of the casings in big chunks that broke up while cooking (messy but easier):

This was at about 10 in the morning... I put the crockpot on low and walked away. I didn't have any plans to check back on it... some of you may start to guess where this is going...

The crockpot wasn't on.

Yep. That's my life.

The switch where I plugged it in wasn't working for one reason or another and I didn't realize til about, oh... 4 in the afternoon. So it'd been sitting there all day. Crap!

LUCKILY for me, my crockpot can go on my stove top. All was not lost!! So I put it on the stove top and brought it to a boil:

And I kept it at a low boil for about 2 hours, stirring it frequently.

In the last 5 minutes or so I added the minute rice:

And then my almost disaster was complete!!

So, the changes I suggested probably pack on a few more of those WW points, but I think those little tweaks really made this into a keeper! Also, I'm sure that if it had cooked all day in the slow cooker everything would have tasted much better the first night, and that's probably why it tasted so much better on the second night - so this is all my fault for not checking on my crockpot!!

Anyway, a big thanks to Chubbie Chica for the recipe, sorry if it seems like I mutilated it, but really it was a great meal, I just messed it up royally!!!

Let me know if try this!

Love and Luck to you,

The Packet Queen