Some food for thought... Or Tomato Soup

I cook. A lot. Two to three meals a day, seven days a week. This is how I grew up. This is what I know as normal.

The hubs and I live in the country. Albeit only five miles outside of town, it is still not in our nature to run into town and pick up fast food.

And so, I cook. A. lot.

I like it though. Most days anyways, except for the dishes.

What's good for me is that cooking has become cool. I mean we live in a world with celebrity chefs for goodness sakes! Can you imagine what Mrs. Patmore would say about that!?

So there is an endless supply of recipe ideas coming at me all the time; magazines, TV, books, you name it, I gather ideas from it!

I have a point here, I really do.

I have tried and tried, but I haven't mastered taking quality photos of food yet. And let's face it nobody wants to try a recipe accompanied by a bad photo.

So I've decided to start sharing some of my recipes with you all, sans pictures.

I know, I know, we eat with our eyes first, but you'll just have to bear with me until I can get mouth watering photos to accompany the delicious recipes!

Have a little faith. Or as my brother put it so well the other day, "I wouldn't think to put together 90% of the food you do, but either you're really lucky or you know what you're doing."

How's that for a ringing endorsement?

Have I convinced you yet?

Oh and by the way I very rarely follow recipes exactly so feel free to substitute, experiment, do whatever makes you happy.

The boys (the hubs and my brother) were out of the house tonight, which meant I could cook for myself! Anything I wanted!!!

They both turned up their noses on the way out the door when they heard I was making tomato soup.

They were wrong!

I've been looking for a homemade tomato soup recipe for awhile now, and this one hit the spot. It's adapted from a recipe I found in a magazine.

My version makes about two medium sized bowls of soup. I made it smaller than the recipe in the magazine so it'd be easy to double if you'd like!

Simple Tomato Soup

Cook two to four pieces of bacon in a heavy bottom pan. (Dutch oven works well)

Remove bacon and set aside. Reserve about one tablespoon bacon fat.

Place one half a yellow onion chopped and one garlic clove peeled and smashed in the pot.

Cook till onion is soft, approximately ten minutes.

Add half a teaspoon ground cumin and a half teaspoon ground coriander.

Cook for thirty seconds or so.

Add a half a cup water, one 14.5 oz can peeled whole tomatoes, and a quarter teaspoon sugar. Heat through, about five minutes.

Pour into blender (if you have one of those awesome immersion blenders, by all means use it!). Never fill a blender full with hot liquid, if you're doubling this recipe blend in batches!

Blend well. Pour back into pot.

Finish with a tablespoon butter, salt and pepper.

Divide into two bowls and crumble desired bacon on top.

Have fun, use whatever toppings sound good to you! Cheese, sour cream, crackers, those all sound good to me!

I hope you give this recipe a try and enjoy it! I'd love to hear if you do. Stay warm wherever you are. Tomorrow is suppose to be a high of 4 degrees here. A perfect day for soup!

Ps. Let's pretend my soup photo would have looked like this.

 

 

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