The I-have-no-food-but-I-want-soup Soup

Let me first apologize on behalf of ALL of us for being completely MIA for what, a month and a half now? That's just awful! It's time to get back into the swing of things.

You know when you need to eat, have no food, and don't want to go get groceries? I'm guessing this happens to all three of us here at BIFL (that's funny) and maybe to some of you readers -- all two of you. Here's what I came up with for dinner tonight. . .

I knew I wanted soup, but I didn't have much around the house. I had two medium tomatoes from a neighbor's garden that were getting a little soft, so putting them in a salad wasn't really going to happen. They had to be used, so here's what I did. I heated a little olive oil in a frying pan, cut the tomatoes up, and sauted them with salt and pepper. I let them go for maybe five or ten minutes, then started to crush the tomatoes with the back of my wooden spoon. I then added a big clove of chopped garlic and let it cook for a couple more minutes. At this point, it was more of a simmer because of all the tomato juice. I then pureed it in my mini food processor. (You could just use this as a delicious pasta sauce and maybe just add some basil and/or oregano!)

In a medium-large-ish saucepan (I started with a 3-quart but then it wasn't big enough and I had to transfer) I sauteed half of a large red onion in some olive oil. I let it go for five minutes or so, then added two cloves of chopped garlic. I then added about eight cups of hot water, the tomato mixture, and brought it to a boil. While waiting for it to boil, I added six teaspoons of Better Than Bullion vegetable paste (and two teaspoons of BTB mushroom paste because I ran out of the vegetable) and a bunch of dried basil. Looking at the onions float around, I decided they were lonely and needed another vegetable to keep them company. So I added some frozen peas to the now boiling soup, because you know I have tons of those in my freezer. That brought the temperature of the soup down for a bit, so when it came back to a boil again, I added some of that tiny star-shaped pasta. (I bought that as a mistake because someone decided to put it right behind a crumbled box of orzo at Shaws). I cooked the soup for another five minutes, and it was good. . . but a little salty. I luckily had some milk in the fridge, so I added a bunch of that, and the problem was seemingly fixed. So there you go.

I heart soup.