{recipe} Crock Pot Creamy Tortellini Soup

I love to cook and try out new recipes, but during the week I am a big fan of quick, easy recipes that I know forward and backward. 

I am an even bigger fan of recipes where I can just toss all of the ingredients in the crock pot in them morning and have a delicious dinner come evening.  However, I have found a lot of the crock pot recipes I've tried to be just okay.  They are either super heavy, bland or just "meh". (That's a real technical term.)

I came across this unbelievably easy (as in so easy that I am almost embarrassed to share it) recipe for Creamy Tortellini Soup from the Little Fellows blog on Pinterest recently. 

I tried it out exactly as posted and thought it was good - but I made a few changes to better fit our family's personal tastes.

• Added an extra 1/2 cup of chicken stock (can sub vegetable stock or water), because I wanted it to be a little less heavy and more soup-like.
• Did not drain the tomatoes.  Again, I wanted the final result to be a little thinner.
• Subbed shrimp for the sausage to lighten up the recipe a bit. To make sure that the shrimp is not overcooked, I added raw shrimp with 45 minutes left to cook.
• Added a full bag (6oz) of spinach - but think it could take even more.

You literally just dump a bag of frozen tortellini, two cans of diced tomatoes, raw spinach, cream cheese, shrimp, and chicken stock into the slow cooker and let it cook for 4 hours - no chopping, browning or anything.  It takes less than 5 minutes - how great is that?

Photo taken part way through cooking.  Cream cheese is still melting.

Crock Pot Creamy Tortellini Soup

Ingredients:
1 19oz bag of frozen cheese tortellini
1 6oz bag of fresh spinach
2 (14.5 oz) cans of Italian style diced tomatoes
1 8 oz block of reduced fat cream cheese (cut into smaller chunks)
4.5 cups of chicken broth
1/2lb to 1lb of raw shrimp (I thawed whatever I had in the freezer)

Add all ingredients except shrimp to crock pot.  Cook on low for 4-6 hrs.  With 45 minutes left of cook time, add raw shrimp.

Serves 6-8

I thought that this recipe would be perfect to share on this rainy, cold (April!) day in Georgia.   Here's to a warm weekend!