Tortellini and Sausage Soup

Soup sounded good for dinner. What kind of soup? I was shocked and surprised when Chris actually suggested I make a new recipe. Woot, woot. Usually this is how it goes.
Me - "What sounds good for dinner?"
Chris - "I don't know honey, I am easy"
Me - "Something has to sound good"
Chris - "Everything you make is good"
Me -"No, but are you in the mood for something in particular?"
Chris - "How about macaroni and cheese?"
Me - "sigh......"

So I went on the search for a new recipe and this Tortellini and Sausage Soup is adapted from 3 recipes I found on the Internet.

Ingredients:
1 lb sweet Italian sausage (I used Insernos Italian chicken sausage)
1 cup chopped onion
2 cloves garlic, minced
5 cups beef broth (I used Swanson's beef stock, not broth)
1/2 cup water
1/2 cup red wine
4 large tomatoes - peeled, seeded and chopped
1 cup thinly sliced carrots
About 6 fresh basil leaves, finely chopped
1/2 tsp dried oregano
1 small can of tomato sauce
1-2 small zucchini cut into bite sized pieces
1/2 lb tortellini

Directions:
1. In a stock pot, brown sausage. Remove sausage and drain reserving 1 tbl of drippings.
2. Saute onions and garlic in drippings. Stir in broth, water, wine, tomatoes, carrots, basil, oregano, tomato sauce and sausage. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 20 minutes.
3. Stir in zucchini and simmer covered for 20 minutes. Add tortellini during the last 8 minutes.

Ok, first off here are some specifics on how I actually cooked this:
1. For the sausage, I browned it whole in the pot and let it rest and then cut it down the center and then in 1/2 circles. I used Italian chicken sausage because I don't like how fatty and gristly regular pork sausage is. I almost bought Adeles already cooked Italian chicken/turkey sausage but the sodium content made me run screaming away.
2. For the onions, Chris hates them. As someone who loves to cook, that is just crazy talk. How can you develop flavor without onions? The answer is you can't. So, I have developed a way to get the flavor without him biting into an onion. I cut the onion in quarters and put 4 of the layers into whatever. Then I can pull them out before I serve it and nobody is the wiser. So that is what I did.
3. For the tomatoes, I peeled them and seeded them but instead of chopping them (again, Chris hates chunks of tomato in soup - whatever) I put them in the food processor and gave them a few pulses until they were more than chopped but not liquefied. Some texture remained but not chunks.

It was tasty. Below is the soup after dinner and also after I put it in a Tupperware bowl as leftovers. It looks greasy but it's just the lighting, really.