Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese

This is the long awaited soup and grilled cheese week.  This meal has been decided since the start of October.  We waited until the end of the month because we knew it was going to be cooler and worth the warm food.  Technically, it is always cold in this office, so anything warm is welcome.  But we have had this planned and are ready to eat!  Shi-Shi and I don't care to eat the tomato soup, really it is for dipping.  Deborah, likes tomato soup, so she got the bulk of it.  I have never made tomato soup so I was a tiny bit nervous.  Thanks Domestic Geek!  I have been saving my pulp from my juicing for my meals that I want to make, this way I don't waste and I get all the veggies already chopped and ready to go.  I froze my carrot and celery pulp and used that in my crock pot.

The recipe called for 8 tomatoes, but since I bought Romas from Sam's Club, I used the whole bag which gave me about 13.  It was perfect.  I chopped those babies up and threw 'em in the crock pot.  In the bottom I have my red onion, which is truly my onion preference over yellow or white.  And don't even ask me to use green onions, in the words of Grace..."iscusting".  Anyway, so I have my tomato, onion and big frozen celery and carrot pulp.  I also added some brown sugar and tomato paste.  On a side note: Why do they make tomato paste cans so big?  I never use them all.  Now I have to make a Boboli to use this sauce up.  I might get frisky and make a cauliflower crust...never been done, something to try. I also added minced garlic and the rest of my vegetable broth. Turned on the crock pot and let it do its magic. The soup was done in about 2 hours.  Now for the magic, the most exciting part! I added my cream and went to town with my immersion blender.  I don't know why, but I have always wanted one and now mama has one.  I didn't want to spend a fortune, so I got a quick cheap one.   The things I am going to mash up with this.  In another post I may talk about my idea for banana ice cubes for my juices.  So I blended everything in batches.  I first used the immersion blender, but there was too much soup for the blender to handle so once it was cool, I blended it with my Ninja and got the consistency I was looking for.  I did add salt, white pepper and black pepper to taste before I blended as well.  All in all, this soup turned out pretty dang good.  I would actually consider eating it rather than just dipping my grilled cheese.

The grilled cheese is nothing souper fancy...see what I did there?!  We used the Artisan bread and Colby Jack cheese.  I added a slice of Gouda to mine, because if I am going to eat cheese, I am going big.