Summer is half over and flying by! I haven't had the chance to share photos of my CSA pick ups for the past couple of weeks. We've been having fun visiting the farm and edible classroom. It's now tomato season, so last week we brought home 5 pounds of them! They became tomato bruchetta and fresh tomato soup!
My son picked out the monster claw-like carrots! He loved eating them too. Cucumbers are another favorite of his. We have fun each week picking a bunch of flowers from the cutting garden. The lettuce is not as abundant as in the past, but I'm happy that we are still getting at least one or two heads per week.
Those are the tomatoes that became soup! I picked out a mix of heirloom and plum/paste tomatoes. We also had the chance to pick blackberries this week. I have plans to turn them into jam once I've collected enough for the recipe. I freeze them each week until there is enough to make into jam. I used the basil to make a batch of pesto. I had so much that I was able to freeze half of it to use in the winter when we are craving a taste of summer.
The fresh tomato soup recipe I use is from Ina Garten, the Barefoot Contessa. My friend introduced me to this recipe a few years ago and it's my go-to tomato soup recipe when making from scratch. I adjusted the recipe to make it a bit lighter by not using all cream in it, replacing the 3/4 cup of cream with a combo of milk and half and half. I also added one summer squash to the pot, since I had it on hand. I reduced the salt to 2 tsp instead of one tablespoon. I also reduced the pepper to just eyeballing a few grinder twists. I figure it's much easier to add salt and pepper to taste at the table than deal with too much!
That is a photo of the pot of soup after I added the tomatoes, squash and basil to the pot. The basil was from my own herb garden! It smells amazing. What I love about this recipe is that no peeling or seeding of the tomatoes is needed. After it all cooks down and tender, the entire pot of soup goes through a food mill, extracting any skins or seeds and leaves a really nice textured soup. I have a really old food mill that doesn't always work as fast as I'd like, so I used an immersion blender first to break down the large veg chunks and then put it through the food mill to extract the seeds and skins. It made a bit more than two quarts. I will freeze one quart to use as a quick meal in the future!
