Soup For YOU!!!

As you can tell, D was gone this week, so I made soup.

I love soup, but it tends to not really be enough for a full dinner for D, so I rarely make it when he's home. That is, unless I make grilled cheese or serve a salad and bread with it. The point is, I made soup this week and it was heavenly.

Our mail is finally catching up with us from the move and the address changes, so we got our February issue of Family Circle late. In it, however, was a whole section of recipes for homemade soup! I saw two recipes that caught my eye, so I decided make them this week while D was gone. They were so good, so I'm sharing them with you!

Red Pepper-Tomato Soup

Makes 6 servings; Prep Time 15 minutes, Cook Time 8 minutes

1 jar (12 ounces) roasted red peppers in brine, drained
1 can (14.5 ounces) diced tomatoes
1 tbsp olive oil
1 can (28 ounces) tomato puree
1 c low-sodium and fat-free chicken broth
1 tbsp sugar
1/2 tsp salt
1/4 tsp pepper
1 c heavy cream
croutons, for serving

1. Combine drained peppers and diced tomatoes in a blender or food processor. Puree until smooth.

2. Heat oil in a large soup pot over medium heat. Add pepper-tomato mixture, tomato puree, chicken broth, sugar, salt, and pepper. Heat just to simmering, about 8 minutes. Remove from heat and whisk in heavy cream. Return to stove and heat through. Ladle soup into bowls; top each with a few croutons.

For this recipe, I also added a little bit of red pepper flakes to spice it up a tad and it was delicious. Also, since I was making this for only one person and the recipe feeds 6, I froze the soup before adding the cream so when I defrost it in the future, I'll just add a little cream to my bowl and stir it in.

The next soup I made was totally different, but something I'd been wanting to try for a while.

Winter Veggie Bisque

Makes 6 servings; Prep time 15 minutes; Cook time 12 minutes

1 large onion, peeled and halved
1 Granny Smith apple, peeled and cored
3 carrots, trimmed and peeled
2 tbsp butter
2 packages (12 ounces each) frozen cooked winter squash, thawed
3 c vegetable broth
2 tbsp sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
3/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/8 tsp cayenne
1/2 c heavy cream

1. Shred onion, apple, and carrots either with a box grater or with shredding blade in food processor. Heat butter in large pot over medium heat. Add shredded onion, apple, and carrot. Cook 7 minutes, until softened.

2. Stir in squash, broth, sugar, ginger, salt, cinnamon, and cayenne. Bring to a boil over high heat. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer 5 minutes.

3. Transfer mixture to food processor fitted with chopping blade or to blender. Puree until smooth (do this in batches, if necessary). Return to pot and stir in heavy cream. Gently heat through.

Again, I froze the leftovers of this soup before adding the cream, so if you plan to make this and freeze, I would keep that in mind. I also couldn't find frozen squash at our commissary, so I just oven roasted some butternut squash in the morning and then let it cool. After if was cool, I cut it into chunks and used that instead of the frozen variety.

I hope you all enjoy these recipes, I know I'm already looking forward to our next "soup dinner" so I can break out these from the freezer!