.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