Pasta e Fagioli (This is sort of a combo of Marcella Hazan's recipe and The Olive Garden's, lol. But there's also a good shortcut method, which I'll describe here too): Mirepoix (which is called a soffritto in Italian cooking) minced garlic (3-4 cloves) 1-2 lbs ground beef  1/2 lb ground pork (optional. You can also use Italian sausage meat instead if you like a little spice; I don't, but some do) 2 cans beans: cannelini beans OR cranberry beans OR kidney beans OR Great Northern beans, or any combo thereof 2 C beef stock 1 or 2 large can tomato puree or tomato sauce (depends on how much meat you're using) 1 regular-sized can diced tomatoes seasonings: basil, oregano, a little thyme, dash nutmeg bay leaf soup pasta: orzo, small macaroni, dittalini, orchiette, etc. Ditalini is best here. white wine (optional) Parmesan cheese, romano cheese (romano optional) Sweat the soffritto, with the garlic, in olive oil. Remove from pot, and brown the meat (drain the fat if necessary). Add the seasonings (remember, you've already got salt & pepper on the veg there for the sweat). Add the white wine if using, maybe 1/2 C, and the tomato sauce, diced tomatoes, and stock. Pour in both cans of beans with their juice. Give it a good stir. Add a bay leaf and simmer for forty-five minutes - an hour. You want it to reduce a bit but still be, well, soupy, and a little waterier than eating texture because you're going to cook pasta in it, which will soak up a lot of the extra liquid. Alternatively, instead of using a soffritto and tomatoes etc., you can just brown the meats and add a large jar of whatever purchased or pre-made pasta sauce you like. If using premade sauce, use only 1 C stock and 1 C water. Check for seasonings after it's simmered twenty min or so, and add whatever you think it's missing. Grate in a good amount of parmesan (or parm & romano), stir it in, simmer a little longer. About ten minutes before you want to serve, check to make sure the soup is still liquidy enough to cook pasta--if not, add more water, then stir in the pasta (1 box, about one pound) and simmer until cooked. Serve with more cheese grated on top, if you like, with some good garlic bread or garlic Texas Toast. I've done both the canned-tomatoes-canned-sauce method and the pre-made-spaghetti-sauce method. They're both good. So it's really up to you. I prefer plain canned puree, but that's because I always make my own tomato sauce for pasta anyway. If you usually use jarred sauce--which is fine of course--or you just don't feel like messing with it, go ahead and use jarred sauce. ...I think that's about it. I make a lot of soups, but they're usually variations of the beef barley--like I said, you can use whatever meats and veg and liquid you like. Once you've made a few soups you'll be able to really start experimenting and having fun with them, finding combos you especially like.  Oh, a good tip to add body to soups/stews: bloom a packet of unflavored gelatin (or soften a sheet of leaf gelatin in cold water, which is my preference) and add the gelatin to the hot soup. Stir it in well. It adds a nice silkiness and body to the soup. You can also use the soup-liquid-and-flour-goo method from the chicken and dumplings recipe to thicken just about any soup, or the roux we made in the beef burguignonne recipe. Keep in mind, too, that any sort of grain added to soup will help thicken it, like the barley or rice or pasta. More than once I've set out to make a beef and rice or chicken and rice soup (which is much like the chicken and dumplings, but add rice about half an hour before serving and let it simmer, and skip the dumplings) and ended up with something more like a burgoo or pilau, but hey, those are also yummy.