.oh hi.

Well hello friends.

What's been happening? Over here it's been, well, mostly just life. Moving, and babies, and surviving. All that fun stuff.

For awhile now, however, I have felt that something has been a bit lacking. Me. I have been a bit lacking. So, I'm not saying I'm back, I'm not saying I'm not back, but I am saying I know I need to kind of kick start myself back into..... Sara.

Not wife Sara. Not mama Sara. Not friend Sara. Just Sara.

Now, that being said, we have been in a new state, Georgia, for a little over 6 months now. We're still figuring things out. Still finding good people. Still looking for a niche. But in the meantime, a girl has gotta eat lunch. As do her babies, who are 2 and 4 now, so not so much babies!

I asked the Peanut to help me meal prep for this week. I let her pick lunches. On the list are green smoothies, crackers and cheese, sandwich kabobs, tuna salad and......

Grilled cheese with tomato soup!

Now, I won't lie. I definitely considered just buying a canned tomato soup and calling it a day. But then I remembered how much I have been missing the creativity and pride of cooking something amazing and sharing it with y'all. I thought, was a great, simple recipe to whip up and blog about. So, a plan started forming.

One thing to note at this point: I hate tomato soup. There I said it! I hate it! I always have, ever since childhood. But once upon a time I had an amazing bowl of tomato soup. It was in South Dakota, in 2008, at the Prairie Berry Winery (which also has frickin' amazing wines, if you're ever in the Black Hills, find a way to stop in!). And no, I can't tell you why I ordered tomato soup, when I know I hate tomato soup, but I just did. And it was worth it. Maybe God spoke to me and told me to order the soup. Je ne sais quoi. So, when I was trying to decide how to make my soup, the Prairie Berry concoction is immediately what came to mind.

I mean, come on y'all. Come on! Tell me you don't want to lick your screen right now. It was an amazing bowl of soup.

Creamy, tomato-ey, with a nice hint of basil. The soup was better than the grilled cheese. Which is bread and cheese, and therefore pretty hard to beat. I set to recreating something similar.

And failed. Miserably. My soup tasted nothing like the soup I remembered. And in fact I absolutely hated it. I'm sure that's a big surprise. My girls loved it, so I'm guessing it just tasted like typical tomato soup. Since I hated it so much though, I'm not going to post the recipe. It's basically just a giant pot of tomatoes with some spices anyway. Nothing too ground breaking.

I will say though, I did add a secret ingredient. I thought this was going to really change the taste of the soup to something I would prefer. My super top secret ingredient? Canned coconut milk. I put that shit on everything.

And by everything I mean, you know, stuff that needs cream.... like soup. And.... yeah, pretty much just soup. Nah, I use it in my coffee, in curries and even with berries for desert. I absolutely love adding a little coconut milk when applicable. And even some times when not applicable. No shame. Coconut milk is the new put a bird on it. Just do it.

Sadly for my taste buds, however, even my secret ingredient didn't really make this soup shine for me. So I'm basically just saying hello and I will have to work on something that's actually recipe worthy this week. I'll see what I can do!

XO

.put that in your oven and broil it.

Yeah!

So, I decided for this lovely Sunday afternoon meal that I was going to make roasted red bell pepper soup. Completely from scratch. And I have to say, I am not disappointed. This recipe was easy and fun. It is also one of my new favorites. It was so flavorful. It would be great paired with a grilled cheese sandwich, or a veggie panini. We just ate it all on its own and it was more than filling enough.

I used a recipe from food network, minus the cilantro. I halved the recipe, and instead of a set number of large red peppers I just used a bunch of little ones from the farmer market. It turned out beautifully.


Cream of Roasted Red Bell Pepper Soup serves 3
6 small red bell peppers
1 tablespoon butter
1 cup chopped onion
2 cloves minced garlic
1/8 cup tomato paste
3 cups chicken stock
1 cup heavy cream
Salt and pepper to taste
1 cup sweet corn kernels, lightly roasted

You want to start by roasting your bell peppers. There are numerous ways to do this, but I used the broiler on my oven. This was the first time I used the broiler and the first time I roasted peppers, and I have to say it was super satisfying, in a really weird way. Preheat your broiler. Remove the stems from the peppers, halve them, remove the seeds and membrane then place them on a baking sheet with the skin side up. Put them under the broiler until the skin is charred. I think it took mine maybe 12 minutes or so. Take them out of the oven, place them in a ziplock bag and put them in the freezer for 10 minutes. Then take them out of the bag and pinch and peel the skin off. It should come off very easily. And, a word to the wise, I didn't realize this but roasted red bell peppers will burn your hands just like jalapenos do! I learned this the hard way, so you might want to use gloves. Chop the peppers and put them aside.

In a large pot saute the onion and garlic with the butter until the onions are soft. Add the peppers, tomato paste and chicken stock. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a simmer for 10 minutes. Then stir in the heavy cream, salt, pepper, and cornstarch, or other thickening agent. Let simmer for 5 more minutes. I used some cold water and flour and my soup didn't really thicken up much, but was still very delicious.

Take the soup off the burner and let cool for a few minutes. In small batches place soup in a blender, or if you have an immersion blender that would be even better. If you're using a blender, do not fill it more than halfway when working with hot liquids. This would equal big mess and a lot of pain! This is not something I learned the hard way, luckily. I found the best way to blend everything was to use a slotted spoon to get out all of the pepper and onion pieces, then add a bit of the liquid and blend. Then I used a ladle and just did a few batches of the liquid soup, just for good measure. 

Before serving garnish with sour cream and the corn kernels.

Cook on!