Homemade ASAP Tomato Soup

12:59 p.m. Drats! Lunch time! I meant to start making lunch half-an-hour ago.

1 p.m. Race down the stairs, into the garage, and pull out a bag of frozen organic tomatoes from the freezer. Rinse the tomatoes, then thaw them in the microwave, on high, for 8 minutes. Next, wash and thinly slice 3 stalks of celery. Dice 1 white onion. Sauté ingredients until soft in a combination of olive oil and not-butter.

1:07 p.m. Run upstairs to fetch camera. Take picture of tomatoes in microwave.

1:09 p.m. Dump tomatoes into pot. Stir. Take a photo. Cover pot.


1:11 p.m. Finish cleaning and chopping half a bulb of garlic (10 large cloves in this case). Add to pot. With back of spoon, smash down tomatoes. Add in several mean shakes of black pepper straight from tin and 2 healthy pinches (probably 1 heaping tsp. each) of dried basil. When it comes to spices and herbs, I'm not subtle. Because the hubby must restrict his salt intake, I rarely add salt to the stuff I make.

1:14 p.m.: Carefully pluck out tomato skins with my fingers. Since the husband and the mama don't mind eating the skins, I only remove some. For that matter, why am I doing it then?

1:23 p.m. Warm up leftover garlic-mushroom and potato soup for the mama. She's not into tomato soup although I think she just might like this concoction. To bolster the protein for the husband, I tear up leftover turkey to just cover the bottom of his bowl over which I shall spoon the soup.

To go with the soup, I make cheese toast: Sprinkle shaved Parmesan on a slice of white buttermilk bread and stick in toaster oven.

1:31: Call in the troops for lunch.

Verdict: "Delicious," said the husband.

The mama looked as if she might've like some. That's OK, there still is dinner to deal with today.

I thought the soup was a little sharp, yet sweet. The "sweet" was a surprise. I had forgotten about the natural sweetness of these organic tomatoes, which we picked at a local farm last September.

P.S. The garlic, onion, and celery are also local, organic produce, which we bought at the Pinnacle Farm in San Juan Bautista. Its farm stand is open on Saturday mornings throughout the year.