Tortellini Soup

In an earlier post, I mentioned calling my friend Katina who was good enough to look up the ingredients for a recipe online. The recipe was tortellini soup. I found several recipes and kind of melded them together and made up my own version. I felt like it was a success. I gave it an 8 out of 10 and Homer gave it a 6-7 out of ten; either way, good enough to serve again. It was definitely easy enough, so I thought I would post it here, both to share and to make sure that it was easy to find the next time I decide to fix it.

Makes You Hot on the Inside Tortellini Soup
(yes, it really does make you hot from the inside out)

box of chicken stock (32 oz size)
32 oz water
2 cans diced tomatoes with basil, oregano and garlic (undrained)
box of frozen spinach
l lb of cheese tortellini
croutons (optional)
cheese for garnish (optional)
big pot

• combine stock, water, spinach and tortellini; bring to a boil
• add tomatoes and simmer till tortellini is puffy

Serves enough for 4 huge helpings and probably enough for dinner the next night too.

I did not have enough liquid with just the stock to cook the tortellini, so I added the water. In the future, I may just use bullion cubes, that would be cheaper and less calories too. The tortellini was three cheese tortellini from Lowe's Grocery and was pretty good; it came from the dairy case. The frozen spinach was palatable but fresh would have been better. The tomatoes were Del Monte and were pretty garlicky, I write this several hours later and I am still tasting the garlic. I would have liked to have used onions and browned my own garlic, but frankly, I forgot - whoops! Homer picked up some fancy schmancy cheese - sun dried tomato basil and it was pretty good, but I think a mild cheddar would have been an acceptable substitute. We also had cheesy croutons and I think they added a nice texture even though I don't typically like croutons. Harry, however, who loves croutons did not like them in this soup. I served this with 5 cheese garlic bread and even though I like the bread, I thought it was unnecessary.

Homer and I had Duplin's Carolina Red. I like the wine, but did not like it with this soup. I think dry red would be better; this was too sweet. Possibly a dry white might be nice.

Anyhoo, I would fix it again, but am wondering what sort of dessert to fix it with. Homer suggested a cheesecake????