Hearty Smoked Sausage Stew

We love smoked sausage. So of course I wanted to try this stew...from the Everything Soup cookbook.

Hearty Smoked Sausage Stew
1 pound dried red kidney beans
6 cups chicken broth
2 cups water
1 pound smoked sausage, sliced (this comes in 14.5 oz pkg now so I used 2...also I had a coupon for 2)
1 cup barley
2 bay leaves
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp thyme
Salt & pepper

Rinse the beans and soak them overnight in a bowl with enough cold water to cover. Drain and rinse again. In crockpot, combine all ingredients except salt and pepper. Cover and cook on low for 8 hours. Discard bay leaves. Add salt and pepper to taste and serve.

Okay so this wasn't that good. Pretty disappointing after you smell it all day. It just tasted bland. The sausage lost a lot of the flavor, and despite that, the broth wasn't very flavorful either. The barley made the broth kind of glue-y, I thought. Steve ate his but he is easy to please. Melissa said it was "good." The kids didn't really like it either. So definitely not keeping this recipe. On to my next one...