Pasta Fagioli Soup

As most of you know we have two girls under two!  When my youngest daughter was born my sweet grandparents came to visit.  My grandma brought this soup and it tasted so, so good.  I requested the recipe and recently attempted to make it myself.  It turned out great and I thought I'd share!  This also freezes well, and in place of the ground beef or turkey you can also use deer meat. That's what we used and it worked great!

Pasta Fagioli Soup
Ingredients:
One11.5 oz. can V-8 juice (or you can substitute plain tomato juice)
1 lb. ground turkey or beef
Two 15 oz. cans white cannellini beans, drained
2 carrots chopped, 1 stalk celery chopped, 1 small onion chopped
One 14.5 oz. diced tomatoes, undrained
One 8 oz. can tomato sauce
4 cups water
1 tsp. sugar
1 clove minced garlic
1 T. chili powder
1/2 cup elbow pasta, uncooked (You can also use a different variety of pasta and I always recommend whole wheat!)
1 and 1/2 tsp. Italian seasoning
2 tsp. salt
1/4 tsp. pepper
Few shakes of Tabasco sauce

Directions:
Brown ground meat, celery, and onion.  Drain off fat.  Add everything else and simmer about 1 and 1/2 hours.  Stir often to keep pasta from sticking.

Happy eating!
Sara