Crockpot Pasta Fagioli Soup (4WW Points)

I love my crock pot, and because I do I have become an avid fan of this blog. This is a knock-off of Olive Garden's Pasta Fagioli soup that I altered slightly from the original. I let it simmer all day - a little longer than I planned since we were house hunting and it took longer than anticipated (for those interested, we found a couple we liked but probably not the one; so we'll keep looking).

The ingredients:



* 1/2 large red onion(s)
* 1 cup(s) carrot(s)
* 2 medium stalk(s) celery
* 2 tsp ground oregano
* 1 T Tabasco sauce
* 1/2 tsp table salt
* 1/4 tsp black pepper
* 28 oz canned diced tomatoes
* 1 can (15oz) Cannellini Beans
* 1 can (15oz) kidney beans
* 1 1/2 cups Fusilli pasta (I used Trader Joe's multigrain with Flax - and the original called for 1/2 cup but I just wanted more)
* 1 jar (16oz) marinara sauce
* 4 cups Beef Broth
* 1.3 lbs Ground Turkey breast (this is just how much was in the package so I used it all, the recipe calls for 1 lb of ground beef but my points are calculated based on my version)

Directions:
Brown the meat.



Drain and rinse beans.



Dump everything except noodles into the crock pot.



Cook on low for 8 hours, or high for 4. Add noodles and cook for one hour more, or until tender. (Since we got home past dinner time and I wanted to rush this process, I cooked the noodles on the stove top and then stirred them in before serving - it seemed to work just fine, and with the extra meat and the fact that I increased the amount of noodles three-fold the liquid-to-stuff ratio was still superb!)

Serve it up and enjoy!



We ended up sprinkling some fresh Parmesan on top (I mean, you really can't go wrong with anything Italian and Parmesan, right?) It would also be fabulous with some warm bread sticks sans Olive Garden, but all I had were some lavosh crackers so that had to suffice. Oh, and I calculated this based on 10 servings. It made a lot - which is just fine. I look forward to leftovers and will definitely make this again.