thick tomato soup

Soooo, I may be only posting soup recipes for a while.  The arrival of autumn has apparently brought with it a new obsession with making homemade soups.  Soup is just so easy to make, and you can make a bunch of it and eat it all week long, which is great because it's so easy to just toss some cold soup in a pot and heat it right up again.  I love pretty much any tomato soup, but this is thick and hearty and the perfect way to warm up your insides on a chilly day.

I've always loved tomato soup.  Something I haven't always loved?  Grilled cheese.  When I was a kid I hated melted cheese.  Grilled cheese and tomato soup was always a regular meal at summer camp at least once a week, and while I loved tomato soup, I definitely would pass on the grilled cheese.  One day the whole camp was playing a game on a baseball field where you divided in to two teams which stood on the 1st and 3rd base.  One person from each team would run from the base, to home and then up to the pitchers mound where they would grab a mystery food out of a paper bag, have to eat it and swallow completely before running back the base and tagging the next person to repeat the process.  First team to get everyone done won.  In the bag there were gross things and delicious things.  When I got there, I pulled out none other than a grilled cheese sandwich left over from lunch.  Of course everyone on my team was thrilled because most people would think grilled cheese is yummy.  I tried choking it down but couldn't do it and they let me run back without finishing it.  So, there's my grilled cheese horror story.  Did you even think such a thing could exist?  A grilled cheese horror story... anyway, long story short, I loved grilled cheese now (well, not with those nasty kraft singles fake cheese slices, that stuff still grosses me out).


(adapted from Jenny Steffens Hobick)

3 cloves of garlic, minced
2 tablespoons of olive oil
1 - 14 oz. cans of diced tomatoes
1 - 14 oz. can of whole tomatoes
2 cups of chicken broth (or vegetable)
1 tsp of salt
1 tsp of sugar
1/2 tsp of pepper
2 tsp rosemary
1/4 cup of heavy cream

1. Saute the garlic in olive oil in a saucepan on medium heat for a minute.  Then add the diced and whole tomatoes (juice and all), chicken stock, salt, pepper, rosemary and sugar.

2. Cook the soup on medium at a simmer for 10 minutes.

3. Reduce the heat to low and stir in heavy cream.  Transfer to a blender and puree (or use an immersion blender).

I served it with a slice of french bread toasted with cheddar on it (open faced grilled cheese?).  Yum!