Homemade Tomato Soup

Homemade Tomato Soup
Dorcas Annette Walker

February is a tantalizing month that teases you with thoughts of spring. Daffodils poke their heads out of the ground showing the first sign of green as trees and bushes start forming buds despite frigid temperatures. The sun shines and the thermometer rises hinting at warmth, yet there is a cold brisk breeze along with lingering snow in shady spots that lets you know winter is still not over. Usually about this time I get “cabin fever”. This year I am too busy keeping up with the green plants overflowing my dining room table. I decided in January to start some plants for my garden from heirloom seeds and talked my husband into setting up a light on my dining room table. While the snow was flying outside and the wind was howling around my house, I played in the dirt.., uh, potting soil. After planting some tomato seeds I couldn’t resist planting peas, beans, lettuce, Hubbard squash, and a couple of flowers. They hardly took up any room. I didn’t think all the seeds would sprout, but lo and behold if they all didn’t come popping up out of the soil. I transplanted the tiny plants into small Styrofoam cups. In a couple of weeks the plants had tripled in size so I again transplanted the healthy plants into large cups amazed at the size of their roots while crowding my dining room table. I’m not worried about my foot high peas as I will be able to plant them in the ground in a couple of weeks, and my tomatoes and lettuce are coming along nicely, but it is my nearly two foot tall lima beans that are starting to concern me as I can’t set them out until about the middle of April. Dana keeps telling me that we will be picking our first crop of limas inside the house. I’m beginning to feel a close empathy with Jack in the Beanstalk in the midst of my dining room jungle. Instead of reclining in my chair by the fire looking at flower magazines at leisure, this year I am kept on the go transplanting and watering all my growing plants. I’ve come to understand the true meaning of winter gardening. Hopefully if I cut back on the miracle grow I can stunt the growth of my lima beans for a little bit.

For a taste of summer in the middle of winter my chunky Homemade Tomato Soup makes a healthy and yummy lunch with its high vitamin C content. I love eating a grilled/fried cheese sandwich along with my Homemade Tomato Soup. Any leftovers can be heated up in the microwave. Preparation time for my Homemade Tomato Soup is fifteen minutes and this recipe serves around five.

Homemade Tomato Soup

1 qt tomatoes
1 tsp sugar
1 (12 oz) can evaporated milk
Salt & pepper to taste

Chop tomatoes in a blender or pour into a kettle and mash. Boil tomatoes and sugar for ten minutes stirring with a Wisk. Add milk, salt, and pepper. Bring to a boil, then immediately remove from the heat, and serve!

Weekly tip: To prevent the milk from curdling in tomato soup you can also add a teaspoon of baking soda to the tomatoes and then 1 tb of flour with the milk. Warning: doing this makes your tomato soup taste like canned soup!

Dorcas Annette Walker is a published author, columnist, speaker, freelance magazine writer, and photographer from Jamestown, Tennessee. Contact her at: dorcasannettewalker@gmail.com For more recipes check out her Creative Tennessee Mountain Cookin blog at: www.dorcasannettewalker.webs.com