Friday, August 19, 2011

Tomato Soup 2011

The 4-3/8" of rain on Monday left me with splitting tomatoes (after the 5-3/4" the week before ended the summer dry spell).

What to do, what to do...

Had enough to fill a stock pot about 2/3rds. Medium heat to a low boil for about an hour, roughly every 20 minutes I mashed with a tater masher and took off excess liquid with ladel (putting it through the cheesecloth strainer).


Remember after I began I had thrown out my sieve because it was getting rusty and hadn't bought a new one. Had some cheesecloth though :) Stir and press with a wooden spoon, also let it sit for a ten minutes a few times between pressings till I got what was going to be easily got:


The rest of the ingredients. I didn't use the red onions or shallots after all...though I could've without any negative effect. White onions were garden fresh as in I realized I wanted more onions and didn't want to use my storage onions. The organic stock is because it was cheapest(!), and the organic celery didn't cost me any more -- it was $2.99 for a 1-1/4# of organic or $2.99 for a 2# package of conventional and I didn't need two pounds. Carrots I had in the fridge and needed to use up. The container with the tomato juice I used to measure how much I made -- filled a 1.6L container to the brim!

After the photo was taken I went out and got basil and oregano (two varieties each) from the deck pots, chopped them finely and added to the mix.


Moderate boil for, oh...an hour? Till the carrots felt right :)

Added raw milk to the mug and a garnish for the photo.


Other then the mug for dinner, the rest will get frozen for this winter. No sense adding milk or cream to the whole batch now -- besides keeping it on the plain side allows you to mix it to taste with stuff like pepper, sugar, cream, etc. when it's used this winter. May end up needing capacity in Mom's fridge...

1 comment:

Rebecca Foster said...

I've never made tomato soup-- looks great! Tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich is such a great meal.