Tenth Soup!

I did it! I made all ten soups from Real Simple magazine's "ten ideas for soup."

I was putting off the last soup: Tomato Soup with Parmesan and Croutons. There wasn't anything particularly notable or exciting about the recipe. Plus, Jeff hates tomato soup and kept hoping I would make it one night when he was away.

To compensate for the potential failure, I served it with a hearty salad with spinach, grilled chicken, apples, pecans and goat cheese. (So if anyone didn't like it, they wouldn't starve.)

Here's my soup and salad.

Here is the magazine version, presumably Photoshopped with lots of extra red coloring.

It surprised us! We all liked it. Even Jeff. With only six ingredients (other than the toppings), I didn't expect it to have such a nice flavor. Of course, the toppings add quite a bit in both flavor and texture! It was really healthy too -- no cream or other decadent ingredients... and it still tasted great. I would definetely make it again and it was so simple that I wouldn't even have to follow a recipe. I could totally wing it.

I could use an immersion blender, though. Transferring the soups that required blending (four of the ten) from the pot to the blender and then out of the blender into a separate pot (so the blended stuff didn't mix with the non-blended stuff) and then back into the original pot was a messy hassle.

Next week, I'll share an overall review of the soup project with ratings, things we learned, favorites, surprises and more!