Evil Tomatoes

Seriously, we have a lot of tomatoes. I was trying to think what to do with all of these tomatoes that are taking over my back yard. Frank was also having a bad day so I thought I'd be a nice wifey and make a comfort food dinner. We're trying to get back on the wagon diet-wise, and even though a large supreme pizza from pizza hut would be comforting, it's not part of the diet (and anyway, that's what we had for dinner last night . . . seriously). 

I decided on homemade tomato soup with grown up grilled cheese sandwiches. Okay, so maybe two slices of buttered carbs with cheese in the middle isn't exactly going to help my pooch, but baby steps. 

I found this recipe from Ina Garten for the soup but really changed it up, so I'll just explain it here. 

Ingredients:

Around 4 lbs of tomatoes

3 cups of chicken stock

1 large onion

4 cloves of garlic

3 tbs olive oil

1 cup of plain greek yogurt

fresh basil

salt and pepper

1 tbs sugar

1. First, prep the tomatoes. Here's the easy way to peel: remove the stems, score the bottom of the tomato with an X, drop the tomatoes in boiling water for a few seconds and then transfer them to a bowl of ice water. This makes them super easy to peel. Get out as much as the "goop" and seeds as possible and chop them up finely. Dice the onion and mince the garlic.

2. Heat olive oil in a big pot. Add onions and garlic and let them cook and get soft for ten minutes.

3. Add chicken stock, sugar, and tomatoes. Bring everything to a boil.

4. Once it has boiled, reduce the heat to a simmer and cover. Cook for 40 minutes.

5. Remove soup pot from the heat and let it cool for a few minutes (I didn't actually do this because I have no patience). 

6. This part is annoying but essential. Ladle the soup into a blender and blend the crap out of it until it's nice and smooth. Only fill the blender halfway or there will be a boiling hot red soup explosion. It took me 2 blender-fulls to do all the soup. Transfer the soup back into a pot. (I used a new pot, to help the soup cool faster.

7. Once the soup has cooled off a bit (mine was good to go from the combination of blending and putting it in a new pot) stir in a cup of plain greek yogurt. Also stir in as much finely chopped basil as you want. Taste it and add salt and pepper accordingly. Heat it again when you're ready to eat. 

When I cook, I generally try to replace bad things with good things. The original recipe called for heavy cream but that wasn't happening, so I added the yogurt instead. You could probably also try 2% milk or something. Just make sure your soup is a little cooled off, so that your creamy whatever doesn't curdle. I'm sure it would have tasted extra delicious with the cream, but these are the sacrifices we have to make, people. 

I also didn't use the carrots because this is tomato soup. Get your own soup, carrots.

The grilled cheese is pretty self explanatory: good fontina cheese, bakery sourdough bread, margarine instead of butter (point!). If you can't make a good grilled cheese sandwich, you should probably reassess your life.