Turkey Sausage Bean Soup

New Year's Eve. The last night of 2019. The year that began with me in a Hermitage apartment with a boyfriend named Terrence and two kids and a dental hygienist job and ends with me in the same apartment, no boyfriend (co-parent, different category), same two kids plus one in production, same job, and the knowledge that 2020 is going to be the year everything changes. A baby in June. A new number. Three. Three children. The word is heavier than two. Two is manageable. Two is a defense — one on each hand. Three is a zone. Three requires help, strategy, a woman who has moved beyond capability into something more like faith.

Terrence left December 28th. Back to Atlanta, back to Horizon, back to the nameplate and the studio and the apartment in Decatur where the fire helmet sits on the nightstand. The goodbye was easier this time — not painless, but practiced. We've learned how to part. We've learned the choreography of it: the hug that lasts exactly right (not too long, not too short), the kiss on the forehead (not the lips — co-parents don't kiss on the lips, that's a boundary we set that hurts every time I enforce it), the wave from the car. He waved. Jayden waved. Chloe waved. I waved. Four people waving. The Mitchell wave. The wave that says: we'll be here when you come back.

New Year's Eve was quiet. Mama came over. We watched the Nashville New Year's special on TV — the music note drop at Bicentennial Park. Chloe stayed up until midnight for the first time in her life and documented it like a journalist: "It's 11:58 and I'm still awake. It's 11:59 and I'm still awake. It's MIDNIGHT and I'm STILL AWAKE." She fell asleep at 12:04. Jayden was out by 9 PM, curled on the couch in his Atlanta Fire t-shirt. Mama and I clinked our glasses (sparkling cider for me, champagne for her — "I'm drinking for both of us," she said) and she said: "2020, baby. Your year."

2020. My year. The year with a baby in it. The year I turn twenty-eight. The year that will be — though none of us know it yet, sitting in a Hermitage apartment watching confetti on TV — the strangest year any of us have ever lived. But we don't know that. We just know: new year, new baby, same cornbread, same family, same stubborn Mitchell women standing in kitchens and refusing to be defeated by anything, including time, including geography, including a world that is about to change in ways we cannot imagine.

I made black-eyed peas for New Year's Day — the Southern tradition, the good-luck food, the peas that are supposed to bring prosperity and health and all the things you need when you're starting a new year with a baby on the way and a co-parent in Atlanta and two kids who need shoes and a car that doesn't fit three car seats. The black-eyed peas are an act of faith. You eat them because you believe — or because you want to believe — that a pot of peas and a slab of cornbread can hold the future together. I believe. I've always believed. The peas are my prayer. The cornbread is my amen.

I’ve made this soup every January 1st for years now—it’s become my answer to the same question that rolls in with every new year: what do you do when you can’t quite see what’s ahead? You make a pot of beans. You slice the sausage. You let it simmer until the whole apartment smells like something good is coming. That New Year’s morning, with Chloe still buzzing from her midnight milestone and Jayden slow to wake and a baby turning slow circles somewhere under my ribs, I needed a recipe that felt like the same thing I’d said the night before over sparkling cider—an act of faith dressed up as supper.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 35 min | Total Time: 50 min | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 lb turkey sausage (smoked or Italian-style), sliced into 1/2-inch rounds
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 stalks celery, sliced
2 medium carrots, peeled and sliced into coins
2 cans (15 oz each) white beans or Great Northern beans, drained and rinsed
1 can (15 oz) diced tomatoes, undrained
4 cups low-sodium chicken broth
1 tsp dried thyme
1/2 tsp smoked paprika
1/4 tsp crushed red pepper flakes (optional)
Salt and black pepper to taste
2 cups fresh baby spinach or chopped kale
1 tbsp olive oil
Cornbread, for serving

Instructions

Brown the sausage. Heat olive oil in a large Dutch oven or soup pot over medium-high heat. Add sliced turkey sausage and cook 4–5 minutes, turning once, until lightly browned on both sides. Transfer to a plate and set aside.
Sauté the vegetables. In the same pot, reduce heat to medium. Add onion and celery and cook 3–4 minutes until softened. Stir in garlic, carrots, thyme, paprika, and red pepper flakes. Cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
Build the broth. Pour in diced tomatoes and chicken broth. Stir to combine, scraping up any browned bits from the bottom of the pot. Bring to a boil.
Add the beans and sausage. Stir in drained beans and return the browned sausage to the pot. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer uncovered for 20 minutes, until carrots are tender and broth has thickened slightly.
Finish with greens. Stir in spinach or kale and cook 2–3 minutes until wilted. Taste and adjust salt and pepper as needed.
Serve. Ladle into bowls and serve hot alongside warm cornbread.

Nutrition (per serving)

Turkey Sausage Bean Soup — The Pot I Make When Prayer Is All I Have Left