Passing on a soupy tradition

Last year I posted the recipe for the home made tomato soup that my mom and I make each year. This year I am excited to post an update to the recipe along with some photos from this year's soup making experience.

Last year I wrote about cutting the veggies into quarters or eighths, boiling them, and putting them through a chinoise though what we had sounds more like what is described as a "china cap" in the article. After that, we'd stir in the flour-oil thickener and herbs. It was a labor and time intensive process. This year my mom and I both were crunched for time and needed to develop a more efficient way of doing soup. We developed variations on the same thing. Both are faster.

My Mom's Variation:

Seed the tomatoes and juice and other vegetables. Puree the tomatoes in your blender until they are liquefied, dump it all in a pot, bring it to a boil, and add your thickener and herbs.

My Variation:

My blender didn't do so well at pulverizing tomato skins, so I cut the tomatoes in half and popped them and other veggies into the blender, seeds and all. After they resembled a tomatoey smoothie, I strained them through the food mill my mother-in-law handed down to me. I then added my thickener and herbs and proceeded as outlined in the recipe.

I enjoyed Little Man's help this year. He "threw" the tomatoes into the sink or blender, pushed the buttons on the blender, and delighted in "dumping" any measured ingredients into their proper place.

He loved the food mill.

He also loved peeling the onions.
Working on the kept him entertained
a long, long time.

Oh! And lookee!
In addition to using my own home-grown tomatoes,
I got to use my own home-grown red bell peppers!
I am excited to be becoming a better gardener.

We have already been enjoying the "vintage 2009" tomato soup.
And we are looking forward to enjoying it all winter.