Pasta Fagioli ala Mento - revisited

I love making Pasta Fagioli. I love making it for soup day at our school. I added a few variations this year. I used a commercial pasta sauce and thinned it with water and a red wine. I also added dried red pepper, a ton of cumin, garlic, basil, celery and onion. I was not happy with the penne pasta and would have felt better with the regular salad macs. I used a 1 lb Jimmy Dean sausage and a half lb of hamburger. Dan loves it. says it is the best and not to lose the recipe. I hardly ever cook anything exactly the same way twice. Sad really. Hope I can re-create this one.