Making Tomato Soup...From Scratch

We spent our day playing with tomatoes and creating something really yummy!  If you know me then you know I hate the fresh tomato but love all the by products from tomatoes.  Lisa has harvested quite a few tomatoes and so we needed to use them before they went bad. I found a recipe for Tomato Basil soup and it looked like an easy recipe to make so we decided to give it a try.  Thanks to all the equipment and ingredients Lisa had it was easy.  I found out how nice and kind of fun it is to have a food processor, something I never had, and a Ninja blender.  They did all the work for us in order to create the items for the soup.  I will share the recipe at the end of this blog.  We decided to double the recipe and we are so glad we did.  The soup it delicious and we will definitely be making more.  We are trying a new technique for storing the soup, we are freezing the soup in Jars.  Ball jars are freezable now so we had to try it.  If they freeze well, no breakage, we will definitely be doing it more.  It is too  hot outside for soup now but come this winter it will be a perfect dinner especially when have it with Grilled Cheese Sandwiches.

Tomato Basil Soup
Serves 6 to 8
Prep time: 10 minutes
Cook time: 30 minutes

Ingredients:
2 Tablespoons butter
2 medium cloves of garlic, minced
2 medium carrots, peeled and diced
1 medium onion, chopped
4 cups chicken stock
2 cups water
8 Roma tomatoes, chopped
1/4 cup fresh basil, finely chopped
1/2 cup fresh parsley, finely chopped
A squirt or two of lemon juice, optional

Instructions:
1. In a large pot, melt butter over medium heat. Stir in garlic, carrots and onions.
2. cook over medium-low heat until the onion is tender.
3. Add the chicken broth, cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
4. Stir in the tomatoes and simmer for another 10 minutes.
5. Remove from heat and use a hand held mixer ( we used the Ninja blender) to blend soup smooth.
6. Stir in the basil and parsley.
7. Add salt & pepper to taste.
8. If the flavor is flat, add 1 to 2 squirts of lemon juice to taste.

Give it a try, it is good!