#sigosherts #soupdujour
Anyone else trying new things ever since the social distancing started? Although it’s kind of moot at this point, I am one day away from the official end date of my self-quarantine (after flying through two big cities with many reported cases of COVID-19). I’ve been going through totes and closets–downsizing mostly. We continue to homeschool, and I have some craft projects that I’m working on. In addition to all of that I find myself cooking from the pantry. It’s been a week since we were last at the grocery store, and the fresh items are getting low. So when I had an idea and the opportunity (at least I thought the kids were going to be outside for a while) to make a video about making tomato soup and cooking from the pantry, I went for it. It is mostly entertaining, at least to me. 🙂 But it could also be educational for people who may not be used to cooking from their pantry. I also bring up the topic of bone broth, so if you’ve been wanting to figure that out, now is the time, you know, since you’re probably not going anywhere for a while either!
So I found the “original” recipe for this here.
And I, of course, tweaked it, because, that’s what I do. I can’t follow a recipe “exactly” to save my life (which is why I do not bake)! Very soon after our wedding day, my husband discovered this fact about me. From his early childhood on, he fondly remembers that his mother would cook precisely from the recipes she’d collected and honed over the years. Even now, when we head “home” he is sure to get the same savory spaghetti dish his mother has been making for at least the last 39 years. So after marriage began, when I would make him a recipe that he enjoyed, he naturally expected it to taste the exact same way when it came up for dinner again. But no, it wouldn’t be the same, because I doctor recipes–sometimes a little, sometimes a lot. Maybe an essential ingredient would be missing, so I’d improvise, or maybe I’d forget an ingredient altogether! Perhaps I’d add something uncalled for intuitively, or perhaps because I wished to use the item up. Who knows! Thankfully this little quirk of mine hasn’t caused many problems over the years (the worst of which is summed up in three words–purple cabbage soup 🤢), and thankfully my husband appreciates that I am what he calls “an adaptive and constantly auto-correcting person.”
So here is my precise recipe, or at least the adaptation I made in this video, just in case you’re interested and more like my mother-in-law than myself. There are literally no guarantees I will ever make it exactly this way again! 😜
Katie’s Double Batch of Tomato Soup
Serves 5 hungry children (with no left overs 🙁 )
Ingredients
4 Tbsp butter
1 large onion, diced
4 (15-ounce) cans of diced tomatoes
3 cups chicken broth (or bone broth)
2 tsp basil
3 Tbsp honey vinegar
3 Tbsp maple syrup
salt and pepper to taste (ha, precision)
Directions
1. In the soup pot, melt the butter.
2. Add the diced onions and sauté.
3. Add remaining ingredients, stir, cover with lid, and bring to a boil.
4. After reaching a boil, remove lid, turn the heat to medium/low, and let simmer for 40 minutes or so.
5. Turn off heat and blend the soup with a stainless steel immersion blender (or whatever you have that works).
Feel free to adapt and modify as you see fit. 😁