Black Bean Soup with Crab & Kielbasa Sausage

I love to make this soup - it's the only soup my husband will eat!

Last year, when Hurricane Ike visited us, we had this great idea (haha!) to weather it out, stay home and just see what happens. Well, it was ok - the kids slept a bit, i slept nothing, and my husband was asleep on the couch 3 hours before it even approached our West Houston home. I bought a few things to have on hand. You know, water, diet coke, chips, just the essentials. I did, however have the where-with-all to make this soup a few days before. I bought double ingredients, to perhaps share with others. I made the rice, too, and we stored it in the fridge, thinking we could heat it up in those days following the hurricane.
Let me tell you, this soup was the best part of the whole ordeal! In the middle of electricity-free, candle-lit, air conditioning-free, and humidity-laden air, our family was able to heat this soup up on the stove (we had gas still and just struck a match to light it!) and had some resemblance of a 'normal' day!
I had this vision of us serving the meal to all of our neighbors and them being so grateful! Well, we did share it, to A neighbor, and THE neighbor was grateful, we just had a lot left over and without refrigeration - the soup went bad soon after. It's the thought, right??

ANND - it's a slow-cooker recipe, what else could be better?

The Ingredients:
2 (15-oz) cans black beans, drained
3 cups chicken stock
1 (15-oz) can diced tomatoes
1/2 lb kielbasa sausage, cut in half length-wise, then sliced in 1/2 in thickness
1/2 cup diced onion
1/2 cup diced celery
1/2 cup diced carrot
2 T ground cumin
2 bay leaves
Salt & Pepper

The Garnishments:
2 cups lump crabmeat, picked for shells and cartilage
1/4 cup chopped fresh cilantro

The Side/Serve-Along-With:
Brown Rice (Make sure you factor in the 45 min it takes to cook the brown rice!)

The Method:
In a slow cooker, combine all ingredients from black beans through S & P -- Mix well. Cover and cook on LOW for 6-8 hours or on HIGH for 3-4 hours.

Spoon brown rice into a bowl, then ladle soup over rice and garnish with crab and cilantro.

adapted from a Robin Miller recipe