Real estate agent and amateur cook.

After a tweet I sent out from my Twitter @rerockstar account about my Italian Sausage Soup, I had a few requests from some San Antonio friends to share the recipe. Although this doesn’t exactly apply to real estate, I thought maybe it might be something different for the site.

A word of warning before you dive in and start making this “recipe” – I am not a professional chef and as such don’t have much regard for cups, ounces, tablespoons, or pounds. I am a classic case of “make it up as you go” when it comes to cooking and have always been like that. I own a ton of cookbooks, but very rarely have I ever made anything strictly by the rules. Cooking is not about rules. Baking might be, but I’m not much of a baker, so that doesn’t matter one bit to me.

Italian Sausage Soup was part of a long line of soup experiments I started making after having my wisdom teeth removed. I had some really horrible bowls of soup (wild mushroom soup did not come out so hot), but this is one I’ve perfected over time. Whatever you do, don’t follow my recipe to a tee – make this soup your own. That’s what makes food so amazing to me – the ability of two people to take the same ingredients and make something completely different. Alright, enough of my lecturing…

One additional note: I make reference to “mixed herbs” in the recipe. This is a mix of herbs that I get from England and works in everything. A blend of marjoram, oregano, basil, bay, sage, thyme, rosemary and a few things I can’t remember, my mother-in-law brings me boxes of it as she swears by it for cooking. I’m now a convert. If you have English friends have them send you some, if not just use a random sampling of herbs from your spice rack. Definitely use thyme, oregano, rosemary, and basil.

The stock.

Not everyone likes to make their own stock, but I do. For Italian Sausage Soup, I make a ham stock. How? Take ham bones, onions (cut in half), celery stalks (broken into large pieces), carrots (unpeeled, broken into large pieces)), a head of garlic sliced in half, lots of whole peppercorns (at least 20), a dash of red pepper flakes, about a tablespoon of mixed herbs (don’t bother with those fancy sachets), and some kosher salt. Put in a large stock pot and fill with cold water. Slowly bring to a light boil and cook and reduce. Scrape off any of the foam that accumulates and add water as needed – the longer you go with your stock the more flavorful it will be.

If you don’t want to make stock, use some store bought stock: vegetable, beef, and chicken all work in this recipe.

Ingredients.

• 8-10 hot Italian sausages (HEB fresh made are excellent – not too hot)
• Stock
• 6-8 carrots, peeled and sliced
• 1 onion diced
• Lots of garlic
• 4-7 ribs of celery (diced small)
• Kosher salt and fresh cracked pepper
• Mixed herbs
• 1 can of tomato paste
• Two cans of diced tomatoes (HEB fire roasted tomatoes are perfect for this)
• 1 bag of medium pasta shells
• 1 bag of washed spinach (fresh not frozen)
• Frozen peas and corn

Putting it all together.

To make your Italian Sausage Soup, slice the sausages (thin enough that you can get them on a spoon with all the other good stuff) and cook them up in a frying pan. Take them off the heat and drain fat from the sausages into a stock pot. If you have a lot, throw some away – you just need enough to saute with. Heat the stock pot to high and add the diced onion, celery, garlic, and sliced carrots. Hit these with a bit of kosher salt, a healthy dose of mixed herbs, and lots of pepper. Saute until the vegetables start to soften (the carrots won’t be yet, don’t worry). Add the can of tomato paste and stir it around until it loosens up. Throw in the two cans of tomatoes, hit with a bit more kosher salt (tomatoes love salt) and let cook for a few minutes. Fill your stock pot about 3/4 of the way with your stock and bring to a boil. When it’s good and hot, take a taste – need anything? Salt, pepper, or mixed herbs are your solution.

Once the base of the Italian Sausage Soup has reached a boil, it’s time to add your pasta shells. By cooking these in the soup base you get flavorful shells and also a slightly thicker soup. Watch the shells carefully as you will need to start adding other ingredients as they get close to being cooked through. Once the shells start to soften, add frozen peas and corn (add as many as little as you’d like – in fact add any vegetable you want, these are just my favorites in soups). Just before the shells are cooked and the corn and peas are perfect, open up the bag of washed spinach and start adding it to your soup. Take handfuls out of the bag and randomly rip them in smaller pieces. There is no art to this, you just don’t want every piece of spinach to be large. Once the spinach is wilted, your shells should be done and it’s time to serve.

I highly recommend serving this with a bit of shredded Italian cheese (the pre-shredded Italian blend at HEB works perfect) or a big piece of crunchy bread. Mmmm. I’m hungry again.

Hope you enjoy it – let me know how it goes for you!

If we can’t laugh, we’re taking ourselves too seriously.

Real estate is a rather serious job. We deal with legal, ethical, and financial issues all day long. We also deal with the emotions, feelings, heart-breaking stories, and amazing triumphs of our clients. At times, real estate can be a bit of a rollercoaster ride, but those of us that choose to enter and stay, see that as one of the many benefits to being a Realtor®. No two days are ever alike.

As agents, we see a lot of wacky things and hear all sorts of stories, but the ones we see the most are the goofs and gaffes of other agents in the MLS systems we use. While most of these fall in the “innocent mistake or typo” category, there are some that fall into “uh oh, someone’s lawyer isn’t going to look at that too kindly” category.

Enter the Sherlock of Homes.

My friend and fellow agent, Gwen Banta of Los Angeles, is a gifted writer and a hilarious observer of human behavior. If you need a chuckle once in awhile, Gwen is the one to turn to. Gwen searches the MLS and is given tips from around the country on these tiny typos that take an agent’s remarks from a perfect description of a home to new heights. Please enjoy Gwen’s weekly posts on AgentGenius and see that although we’re all here for business, even we can laugh at ourselves once in awhile.

I also write a weekly article over at AgentGenius, so stop by and check out The Stigliano Chronicles for an inside look at life as a real estate agent.

photo courtesy of *tinadelarosa