Tomato Soup Made with Garden-Fresh Tomatoes.

Hello, friends! I hope that you’ve been doing well. I’m back (slightly behind schedule, of course…) with a new post! Today we’re going to be talking about tomato soup. Yum!

We visited Bobby’s grandparents over the weekend and his grandma gave us some vegetables from her beautiful garden — tomatoes included. I initially thought about canning them, but I ended up deciding to try my hand at tomato soup.

I scoured Pinterest for ages, looking for a recipe only to realize that I didn’t have all of the ingredients necessary. And because I am so impatient, I decided to just make up my own recipe. It is because of such things that I find myself enjoying cooking over baking — improvising has a much better result in the cooking world than in the baking world.

Ingredients that I used…

• Tomatoes: (Of course!) I probably had around five large tomatoes and ten or so cherry tomatoes. Not an exact amount, but enough to comfortably fit on a medium baking sheet.
• Garlic: I had around three cloves of garlic in the freezer (freezing produce is such a great way to lessen waste!) and I halved all three.
• Olive Oil
• Basil
• Oregano
• Cream of Chicken soup: (more on this later…)
• Onion: I ended up using around 3/4ths of an onion, just because we had one in the fridge. Again, I love this about cooking — exact measurements (sometimes) aren’t needed!

What I did…

1. First, set the oven to 400 degrees.
2. Generously drizzle olive oil on the baking sheet.
3. Slice all the tomatoes in half — even the cherry tomatoes!
4. Add tomatoes and garlic to baking sheet. Season with salt and pepper.
5. Put into oven for forty minutes.
6. While the tomatoes and garlic are in the oven, begin to sauté the onions with some olive oil. Do this for around fifteen minutes, covering with lid. Stir every few minutes. When they are a golden color, set aside and let them cool.
7. When the tomatoes and garlic are ready, take them out of the oven. The tomato peel should slide right off. Let these sit and cool for around twenty minutes.
8. Once everything has cooled, place onions in blender. Blend.
9. Add tomatoes and garlic to blender. You guessed it — blend.
10. Once everything has been sufficiently blended, soup can be added back into the pot over medium heat.
11. Next, add the soup… As I mentioned previously, I made this recipe with items I already had on hand, so this probably wasn’t the best soup to have used. I’d recommend some heavy cream or vegetable broth in place of the cream of chicken soup.
12. Stir, stir, stir. Add copious amounts of basil and oregano to the soup. Fresh would be best, but I just used some from my spice rack.
13. Voila! You are all done. Enjoy with a grilled cheese or all on its own.

As I’ve said before, I love cooking because you can really be creative with it. This soup is proof of that. I just want this recipe to be proof that you can have fun with it, you don’t have to be nervous about everything being perfect. Odds are, your dish will turn out delicious. If it doesn’t, at least you’ll have learned what food combinations do not work!

Thank you for reading!

XOXO,

Mattie Mae