More Crazy Talk - The What's For Dinner Edition

Well...dinner snuck up on me again. Funny how it keeps coming around at the same time day after day. When I went down to start it, the tomatoes on the counter stared back at me. This is by far my best tomato season ever. Granted, it's a small harvest in comparison to many of y'all's (can you really have two apostrophes in one word?), but it's huge to me. They've been slowly growing in number and I haven't been using them nearly fast enough. I've dehydrated some - which I TOTALLY recommend, cooked with others, but there was enough to make a fourth batch of salsa. - which was TOTALLY not going to happen. So, I decided to do something I've never done before with fresh tomatoes or even store bought tomatoes and certainly would never consider doing in the summer in Georgia. I made creamy tomato basil soup! Crazy Talk! I know!! and I'd do it again. It was amazing!!!

First I sauteed some carrots and red onion in olive oil for quite some time, then added garlic for the last minute.

Then I added the basil, chicken stock, tomatoes which since I don't have a food mill I had already peeled and deseeded before I chopped up, salt, tomato paste, pepper, and sugar and boiled for about 40 minutes.

Then came decision time. Since I don't have a food mill, I could easily have just left it at that, but it wouldn't have that blended consistancy, so I used a slotted spoon and got out as much of the chunky stuff as I could and ran it through my trusty blender.

I added the heavy cream and returned it to a boil to heat it back up.

It was just outstanding. I'm a huge fan of tomato soup and this is right up with the best I've tried. I thought the carrots and onion were a bit weird - red onion at that - but it was just fantastic.

Here's a link to the full recipe. I only used half of the sugar it recommended after reading the reviews.

Finally, I leave you with the visual proof of why the girl will not be applying her own make up any time soon.

The picture is rather one sided - you're missing the four hair lollies on the other side of her head and the three hanging off of the braid in back.

Granted - she is accessorizing, but imagine that heavy hand with electric blue eyeshadow.

The morning comes early. Sweet tomato soup dreams.