Susan's Quick Tomato Soup

It's wintertime in Texas, and the temperatures routinely hit 50 or 55 degrees as a high. So obviously I'm F-R-E-E-Z-I-N-G all the time. It's torture!

I spend good portions of my day feeding our wood burning stove log after log, trying to reach the elusive 82-degree temperature that the house so comfortably sits at in the summertime. It never gets there, though, so I sit at my desk with me feet perched on a heating pad, bundled in about eight layers of clothes.

Dramatics aside, I'm chilly. I want some soup! But as we all know, that canned soup you get at the store is like buying a salt lick with a little broth around it. Lotsa sodium, is what I'm saying.

So I went hunting for a homemade tomato soup recipe, found one that looked good and modified it for my own tastes. My mom told me that if you change a recipe it becomes officially "Yours," so I'm calling this Susan's Quick Tomato Soup.

I knew it was acceptable when Drew told me that in the future I could either buy the soup from the store or serve my homemade...either one was fine with him. Now that's a compliment!

This soup would be great as a side, great for lunch, great with some brown rice added to it (which I did for Zach, who was yearning for the Campbell's Tomato & Rice soup from the past). Mix up a batch this weekend and eat on it all week. It'll make you nice and toasty!

Susan's Quick Tomato Soup
- 1 TB olive oil or canola oil
- 1 yellow onion, chopped
- 2 garlic cloves, chopped
- 28 oz. can tomatoes
- 2 cups chicken broth
- 1 cup milk
- 1 6-oz. can tomato paste
- 1/4 tsp. pepper
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1 tsp. sugar
- 1 tsp. dried basil
- 1/4 tsp. dried thyme
- 1/2 tsp. baking soda

In a dutch oven or large saucepan, heat oil and cook onion and garlic until soft. Add tomatoes, broth, milk, and tomato paste. Bring to boil, then turn stove to low. Add salt, pepper, basil, thyme, baking soda. Simmer for 15 minutes. Puree with an immersion blender, or in batches in a blender. (You can also leave this as-is if you like a chunky soup.)

Enjoy!

Workout of the Day
P90X2 Balance and Power

So up to this point we were pretty familiar with the moves on P90X2. Not so with Balance and Power. This was a beast! I was stumbling and falling off the stability ball all over the place. It's very core-oriented, as most of the workouts have been so far.