Italian Sausage Tortellini Soup #25

I'm not sure I should even be putting this on here. Recently I received several soup recipes from a friend at school. A couple of those had Italian sausage as an ingredient. To be honest, this doesn't sound good to me, but I don't believe I've ever tried it either. The recipe I wanted to make of hers also called for cheese tortellini and a couple of veggies that I'm positive I don't care for. But there was something about this Italian sausage thing that I wanted to look into. So I went to allrecipes.com and searched for soups containing Italian sausage- okay I'm apparently the only person who hasn't heard about this. Apparently the Olive Garden has some wonderful soup with Italian sausage. Anyways, I looked through about 5 recipes and then combined what I thought sounded good into one. It's a very strange mixture, so to be honest I have no idea how it is going to turn out!

The case: (By Me!)
1 pkg Italian sausage
2 garlic cloves minced
1 can stewed tomatoes
32 oz beef broth
1 cup water
1 can tomato sauce
1 package onion soup mix
1/2 teaspoon dried basil
1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
2 cups cheese tortellini
6-7 potatoes, peeled and chopped into cubes

Directions:
1. Remove casings and fry Italian sausage until brown on medium.
2. Add minced garlic to pan and cook about 2 more minutes.
3. Pour beef broth, water, stewed tomatoes, tomato sauce, onion soup mix into pot and stir.
4. Add cayenne, basil, and oregano. Stir.
5. Bring soup to a boil. Reduce to low and allow to simmer 10-15 minutes.
6. Meanwhile, boil potatoes about 10 minutes or until tender.
7. Add potatoes and tortellini. Cook about 10 more minutes, until tortellini is fully cooked.

The ruling:
If I could do anything in life, it would be to open a soup and sandwich coffee/book shop. I can't believe how good this is. I can't believe I've never had Italian sausage before. At the risk of sounding corny, I feel like my taste buds are doing a little dance right now! This is truly different from anything I've ever tasted! I was worried about the cheese tortellini since the last soup I used it in, we found it bland, but in here it really picked up the flavor. I am so glad I decided to go out of my comfort zone and try this.