Northern Bean Soup from (The village restaurant @ Disney Village)

This soup was best Bean soup I've made yet. I used the following recipe and of course tweeked it to my taste. I will give my adds and what I didn't do during the instructions and at the end.

1 pound of dried white beans
1/4 cup rendered bacon fat or vegetable oil
1 cup diced onion
1 cup diced celery
1/4 tspn coarse salt
1/4 tspn ground white pepper
2 large cloves of garlic-diced
1/4 tspn cumin
1 cup diced fresh tomato
4 cups reduced sodium chicken broth
1 cup water


1.Rinse beans and place in large dutch oven. Add 6 cups cold water. Let soak for 6-8 hours or overnight.
(Per my mom,to do them a little different- the night before rinse the beans, then put them in a pot with just enough water to cover them. Bring them to a hard boil then reduce heat and let them boil for 15 minutes, shut them off, rinse them again. Put them back in pot, cover again with water and let them set over night in the fridge*** Alternate way to reduce the gas in the beans also add 1/4 tspn of baking soda )Drain.

2. Drain beans and return to pot. Fill pot with 6 cups of water. Bring to boil, reduce heat to medium and simmer until beans are tender, about 1 1/2 hours. Drain beans and set aside.
3. Heat the bacon fat or oil in dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add onion and celery and cook for 4 minutes or until slightly softened. Add salt , white pepper,  garlic and cumin and cook for 5 minutes more. Add cooked beans, tomato, broth, and water; cover pot and simmer until vegetables are tender about 10 minutes.
(Okay, here I really veered off the path. I didn't have bacon fat laying around, so I chopped 1lb of bacon into small pieces and fried them up, some softly some crispy. Pulled the bacon out to make room for veggies. Then cooked the celery in the fat. Once all this was done, I added the bacon fat, bacon, and veggies to the broth. Sorry to say I didn't add the tomato, I just didn't have one.)  

4. To thicken the soup, place 1 cup soup in a food processor or blender and pulse until pureed.
Add puree back to the pot. Alternatively, gently mash soup with a potato masher until desired texture is achieved. Serve hot.
(Again, Mom says she uses instant mashed potato mix to thicken the soup. I've also seen the idea to add a chopped potato to the soup)

Allrighty now, here are the rest of the changes I incorporated into the soup. For health reasons of my family I didn't add the onion. But I did add a stick of butter and a good dose of paprika-to your taste of course. My plan for the next soup is to use leeks and put over yellow rice. 
And cornbread goes perfectly with this also.

I hope I've given you thought for food.