Crockpot Pasta Fagioli

This is like the soup from Olive Garden. We ate it on Halloween night before the big trick-or-treating festivities. It is very good. It was posted on the Year of Crockpotting Meals blog on Halloween last year.

Ingredients:
1 pound lean ground beef, browned and drained
1/2 large red onion, chopped, or not
1 cup carrots, chopped
2 celery stalks, sliced, or not
2 cans (14.5 oz) diced tomatoes (and juice), one works too.
1 can kidney beans, drained and rinsed
1 can white beans, drained and rinsed
4 cups beef broth
1 jar (16.5 oz) pasta sauce
2 tsp oregano
1 T Tabasco sauce
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp black pepper
1/2 cup dry pasta, to add at end of cooking time

Instructions:
Use a 6 quart or larger crockpot, or cut the recipe in half. This makes a lot.

Brown the meat on the stovetop, and drain well. Let it cool a bit.

Chop up the carrots, onion, and celery. (If you or someone in your house doesn't like all of the vegetables, you can add less or none of onion and celery.) Add it to the empty crockpot.

Drain and rinse the beans, and add them. Add the whole cans of tomatoes, and the pasta sauce. Add the beef broth. Add the salt, pepper, oregano, and Tabasco sauce. Stir in your meat.

Cover and cook on low for 8 hours, or high for 4. When the vegetables are tender, stir in the 1/2 cup of dry pasta.

Cover and cook for another hour on low, or until the pasta is tender. It will swell quite a bit.

Serve with a bit of Parmesan cheese if you have it.