Instructions: Rinse and sort through beans. Remove any bad ones, or any stones. Place beans in a large bowl and cover with water. Let stand overnight. Drain. Rinse.

Put beans in crockpot with 6 cups of fresh water or stock. Place on high. Fry bacon until crisp. Remove from pan and crumble. Set aside for garnish. Add onions and celery to bacon grease and saute for a few minutes. Add tomatoes and heat through. Add to the beans in the pot. Add remaining veggies and seasonings, except parsley, salt and pepper. Cover crockpot. When soup comes to the boil, turn crockpot down to low and cook for 8-10 hours or till beans are tender. Season.

Remove bay leaf. Put 2 cups soup in blender and puree. Stir into remaining soup together with parsley. Taste. Adjust seasoning. Serve with some crumbled bacon.

MARYS NOTES
You need a large crockpot for this recipe; HOWEVER, you could probably cut it in half and put it in a regular sized crockpot OR just put it in a big covered soup pot on the top of the stove. You can hurry the cooking by leaving the crockpot on HIGH for the first couple of hours. 1 hour on HIGH or about 2 hours on LOW. If you cook it on the top of the stove, DONT cook it on HIGH after it comes to a boil. Turn it down to a simmer and it will be ready in a few hours.

Message From Jayni (texpert@houston.rr.com) to The TNT Recipes List.

NOTES : This is one of Mary Speros originals. It was tried and reposted by Jayni to TNT. I decided I would use turkey bacon to reduce the fat and got some of the 95% fat-free stuff. Well, it was like cardboard when cooked, so I ended up just sticking a few slices into the crockpot to give it the bacon flavor, and then threw them out with the bay leaf. Since there was no grease from bacon, I had to add some olive oil to saute the onion & celery. With all that fiddling, it still tasted good. My version was 4 points under the old WW points system (I hate the new one with the reduced fiber allowance! But its 6 points under that),

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