Tomato Soup

Maggie LOVES tomato soup.  They have it quite a bit at daycare and when we put tomatoes in the garden, she talked a lot about being able to MAKE tomato soup.  So, yesterday, we/I did.  I ended up using a couple of cans of tomatoes as we didn’t quite have enough from the garden (I think we’ll plant a few more next year).  I got a recipe from my dad and mixed it up with a few others I found – his recipe is from the hospital he works at, so it makes quite a bit more than I wanted to make.  And because I enjoy reading food blogs, I thought I’d do the same with the tomato soup:

In this recipe I used:

2 lbs fresh tomatoes (I did not peel or seed the tomatoes.  In the future I might seed them as I did end up with a few seeds in the finished soup)
2 cans diced tomatoes
1 medium onion diced
2 cloves of garlic
1 medium carrot diced
1 medium stalk celery diced
3 T butter
1 T olive oil
1/4 cup flour
1 cup chicken stock
Fresh basil and thyme
2 cups milk
Salt & pepper to taste

Melt butter & olive oil.  Saute onion, garlic, celery & carrots for 5 minutes.  Add tomatoes and cook 5 minutes.  Add flour and cook 5 more minutes.  Add chicken stock and herbs.  Bring to a boil and simmer for 30 minutes.

I used an old stock pot and despite the butter & olive oil still ended up with a burnt mess on the bottom of the pot.  I ended up throwing it out, though it’s not really a loss because I hadn’t used that pot since moving into the house.Strain the soup to remove solids.  I used a strainer and potato masher to get all the tomato-y goodness out.  It was quite messy.

Return soup to pot and add milk, salt and pepper.  Simmer on low until it reaches your heat preference.  After heating, I let the soup cool and froze in quart sized baggies.  I got 4 baggies out of this soup.  To reheat after freezing, let the soup defrost enough to get out of the baggie.  Can be reheated on stove top or in crock pot.

We had soup & grilled cheese for supper tonight.  A little strange on a 90+ degree day, but not so strange for a lazy supper!  I had planned to take a photo of the soup with the sandwich, but I had polished it off before I had a chance.  Rocky had chicken noodle.

I will have another food post soon: Cilantro Chicken!