Creamy Tomato Soup

Create your own heart-warming version of tomato soup that posts less than the can you’d buy at the store. In this recipe, crushed tomatoes are mixed with sautéed onion and garlic, pureed, then turned into a velvety concoction by stirring in heavy cream.

Ingredients

• Print Recipe
• Email

• Save Recipe
• Add to Shopping List

2 tablespoons olive oil

1 onion, chopped

1 clove garlic, chopped

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 28-oz. can crushed tomatoes, with juice

1 1/2 cups low-sodium chicken broth

1/2 cup heavy cream, warmed

Salt and pepper

Preparation

Warm oil in a large saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion and cook, stirring often, until softened, 3 to 5 minutes. Add garlic and cook until slightly softened and fragrant, about 1 minute. Stir in flour to blend, about 1 minute.

Add tomatoes with juice and broth to saucepan, increase heat to high and bring to a boil. Stir or whisk constantly until slightly thickened, about 3 minutes.

Working in batches, carefully transfer soup to a blender and puree until smooth. Pour into a bowl until all soup is pureed. Return soup to saucepan, stir in cream and cook over low heat for 3 to 5 minutes, until heated through. Do not boil. Season with salt and pepper. Serve hot in warmed cups.

Halloween Display Tip #1: Pumpkin Bowl

It’s October now!  October means the start of Fall, and the coming of Halloween.  If you’d like to add some of that October flavor to your meals, use a pumpkin for a serving bowl!

No, I’m being serious.  What better way to add pumpkin and Fall to your life than hollowing out a pumpkin to use as a serving bowl?  You could also get a couple of smaller pumpkins for a personal touch.

Simply heat up some canned soup if you don’t feel like cooking, hollow out a pumpkin, and that’s it!  (The pumpkin filling with some spices and a pre-made pie crust would make an amazing pumpkin pie.)

Photo credit: http://www.aruba.com/forum/f12/recipes-28166/index2.html

Idea credit: Christina

Quinoa, Avocados, and Egg Whites Are All You Need

Got another easy quinoa dish for you guys! This one takes twenty minutes max, and all you need is:

• Roughly a cup of quinoa (white, red, mixed–whatever!)
• An avocado (half an avocado will also do)
• Egg whites
• And, of course, salt and pepper to taste

Each of these ingredients should be prepared separately. Any mixing that occurs will happen way later, in your mouth and stomach.

First boil a cup of quinoa in a saucepan filled three-quarters of the way with water. A whole cup of quinoa might be a little excessive if you’re only cooking for yourself, but it doesn’t hurt to have some extra quinoa lying around for those lazy days where even boiling water seems far too strenuous.

As the quinoa cooks, split open an avocado and mash it into a guac-like consistency, seasoning to taste with black pepper, lemon or lime juice, and salt (though we recommend substituting salt with Tony Chachere’s Original Creole Seasoning, which you can buy here).

Keep an eye on the quinoa, stirring every two minutes or so because that is the responsible, chef-like thing to do. Quinoa generally takes about 15 minutes to cook, so when you hit that 13 minute mark, turn down the heat and pull out a skillet to make an egg white omelette.

After turning the stove to medium-high heat, drizzle a line of oil on the skillet, then after about a minute, drop the egg white onto the pan. (Presumably, you’ll have separated the yolk from the egg whites beforehand.) Let it sit for about thirty seconds, sprinkling salt and pepper on it as it cooks. Poke at the edges of the omelette to keep it from sticking, then after about a minute, flip the omelette over for about ten seconds. And voila! Egg white omelette!

Scoot the omelette from the skillet to the plate with the avocado mash, then (after draining the quinoa) also scoop a generous helping of grain onto the plate. Sprinkle a little black pepper over the whole dish, then sit down, put on an episode of The Mindy Project, and enjoy!

BTW, fun fact about avocados: they are also identified by some as “alligator pears.”