Italian Sausage Soup Recipe

 When it's cold out, my go-to dinner is always some sort of soup. Not only is it a great way to warm up, but it can also help you clean out leftover ingredients from your pantry and fridge, which is exactly how this soup came to be!

My favorite part about this recipe is the broth, especially the little pools of it that get trapped in the shell pasta. Since I eat dairy-free, I'm not able to create creamy thick soups. Instead I love to combine vegetable broth with tomato sauce to give it a bit more of a punch. But you could easily leave out the tomato sauce for a thinner broth or substitute it with milk or heavy cream for a creamier broth.

The first thing you want to choose for this soup is a good italian style rope or link sausage. My family eats a lot of chicken and turkey sausage, so my preferred one for this recipe is the Gilbert's brand Caprese Chicken Sausage, but really any sausage will do. Just make sure that it is one you can slice into 1 inch rounds and the casing will hold the meat into a nice disc.

Once you have your sausage sliced, you will saute them in your soup pot or dutch oven with a little olive oil and your sliced mushrooms until the sausages have started to brown and the mushrooms have cooked down to half their size. Toss in the rest of your ingredients except for the pasta and bring everything to a boil. Then you are ready to add your shell pasta and simmer just long enough for it to be al dente, making this a great recipe for nights when you need a quick dinner.

If you give this recipe a try, I would love to hear what you thought of it in the comments below!

Italian Sausage Soup

Ingredients: 10 oz of Italian style rope or link sausage (sliced into 1 inch rounds) 8 oz of white or baby bella mushrooms (sliced) 2 tablespoons of olive oil 2 garlic cloves (crushed) 48 oz of vegetable broth 15 oz of tomato sauce 14.5 oz of diced tomatoes 3 oz of baby spinach (torn) 1 tablespoon of Italian seasoning 8 oz of small shells pasta (uncooked) salt and pepper to taste Shredded parmesan for serving (optional) Makes 5 servings

Directions: 1. Heat olive oil in large pot or dutch oven over medium heat. 2. Add sliced sausage, mushrooms and crushed garlic. Saute until sausage has started to brown and mushrooms have reduced to half their size. 3. Add in all ingredients but the pasta and parmesan. Stir to incorporate and bring to a boil. 4. Once boiling, add the pasta and reduce to a simmer. Cook for 6-7 minutes until pasta is al dente. 5. Top with shredded parmesan if desired and serve.

It's Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas With Prairie Lights!

If you find yourself in the Dallas/Ft Worth area around Christmas time, there is one event you should be sure to attend...the Prairie Lights! This drive-thru experience turns Lynn Creek Park in Grand Prairie, Texas into a Christmas wonderland that my family looks forward to every year.

At Prairie Lights, you get to drive through the park right off of Joe Pool Lake and view 2 miles of gorgeous Christmas light displays with various themes, moving features and even more surprises. The event opens on Thanksgiving night and runs through New Year's Eve each year, with the park opening each night at 6pm. The wait can get long some nights so make sure you are in line before 9pm to make the cut-off.

Every year new themes are added to the display, so the lights you see are always changing from year to year but a few of my family's favorites that are always there are the 12 Days of Christmas display that sings to you as you drive by and the light tunnel that sends you home in the most festive of moods! Other displays we saw this year included the Christmas Garden, Prehistoric Christmas and Santa's Village.

In years passed the midway point has given families a chance to stretch their legs in a walking light path, but to keep everyone safely distanced for the 2020 season the walking path displays have been added to the driving path and guests are given the option to purchase concessions and a touchless video experience with Santa right from the comfort of their cars.

For my boys, this annual event truly kicks off their holiday season and it's one that I hope we can enjoy for years to come! My recommendations for the best experience would be to order your admission ticket ahead of time online, go on a weekday evening, plan to get there before the 6pm open and grab dinner on your way to occupy the kiddos while you wait for the event gates to open. If you are interested in learning more about this experience or purchasing a ticket to attend, you can find out more information on the event's website here: Prairie Lights. And if you take your family, I'd love to hear about your experience in the comments below!

The Secret to Finding Work/Life Balance

 

When the idea of writing for this mom blog was first discussed, I was slightly hesitant because other than sharing my favorite recipes and my overwhelming knowledge of Disney trivia, I wasn’t sure that there was much I could be considered an expert on. So I did what most people in this era would do and asked my social media friends for suggestions. There was a variety of responses to get me brainstorming, but the one that struck me the most actually came from my sister, and it was the request to write about how to balance work and motherhood especially when you work from home. So before we dive into this topic that most, if not all mothers struggle with, I want to share with you a bit of my background so you can connect to where I’m coming from.

For the past 10 years, my life has revolved completely around my home. When we learned I was pregnant with my oldest, I left my job so that I could focus fully on my college courses with the goal of graduating before he made his debut. And after receiving my degree, I made the decision to stay home with my son with the idea in mind that at some point I would go back to the workforce. Fast forward a couple years and I learned that I do not do well when I feel like I’m idling without a sense of purpose, so over the years I have started a number of businesses based on my crafting abilities and products that I fell in love with. They all started as just a way to keep busy until my boys were old enough to attend school, but what I have learned in the process is that the typical office life of working set hours outside of the home just isn’t what I’m made for and doesn’t work for my family. Instead I choose to work from home, and while it has its blessings like the flexibility to attend school field trips and help care for my niece during the school day, it also has its challenges. For example, it’s very easy to get distracted from the writing this post when I have a clear view of the dishes piling up in the sink. 

Which brings us back to the topic at hand, how do you go about balancing your work with your life? And to be honest, my answer may shock many of you because I don’t think it’s possible. Now hear me out. When people talk about a work/life balance what most people envision is a perfect life where you spend equal time accomplishing both your work goals and your life goals. But it just doesn’t work that way, because not only are there way more pieces to the puzzle than just work vs life when you start breaking it down into categories like marriage, self-care, family, current job duties, future career goals, etc, but you also have to realize that all of these things are fluid and what they need to function on any given day has as many twists and turns as Rockin’ Rollercoaster.

Regardless of whether you work in an office or at home, there are going to be occasions where more time and energy is required to accomplish the task in front of you. Just like there will be milestones in your life that will require more focus, like the first year of marriage or having a new baby. And this is where most people will get hung up, because this idea of an equal work/life balance tells us that if we need to work overtime one month, that it makes us a bad mom or if we need to leave work early so we can make it to our kid’s football game, then we aren’t a motivated employee/business owner/etc. And it tells us that we aren’t enough because it makes us believe that there are other moms out there that have figured out something we haven’t, when the truth is, none of us are living that perfect equality because it doesn’t exist.

What does exist is harmony. The ability to understand that just because you need to focus on one aspect of your life right now doesn’t means the others will suffer forever. Knowing that you have goals for your future and that taking the time to strive for them now means more flexibility in the long run. Or knowing when you are at the place in your work career that you can take more time to focus on your family. Because in truth, your work/life balance should be just that, a balancing act that allows your time to ebb and flow between your various responsibilities without causing everything to break. The next time you think about your life, instead of picturing a scale, picture a lake. Most days, the water is calm or there may be a slight breeze pushing it to one shore or another. And every now and then a storm will blow in, causing the water to crash in waves and surge to a shore. But just like those storms in nature, the storms of your life (a new promotion at your job or your kiddo starting school for the first time) will not last long and the balance of time and responsibilities will return to your center. So instead of focusing on keeping things equal, focus on your ability to ride out the storm with your goal being the growth and peace that follows it.