Winter Comfort Food: Tomato Soup and Simple Mac and Cheese

Lately I have really been enjoying the recipes I have tried from Heavenly Homemakers.  I recently came across this recipe for tomato soup that is made from fresh tomatoes and can actually be canned.  I love tomato soup and I do love canning, so I was immediately intrigued.

You see, I grew up on Campbell's tomato soup. Despite the fact that the second ingredient is high fructose corn syrup, I still buy it and still like it once in awhile. It's a childhood thing.

Now in the summertime, we use just about every tomato we can get for our favorite spaghetti sauce canning recipe.  But, I'm always open to squeezing in a new recipe if it's really great and if it's something we will love in the middle of the winter.  If it can be an actual meal for us?  Even better.  I mean, I do like jam and jelly, but seriously, how much can you eat of that stuff?

So I happened across this tomato soup recipe.  Four simple ingredients:  tomatoes, onion, butter and salt.  Three hours on the stove.  A splash of cream.  Heaven in a bowl.

I was just going to bookmark the recipe and add it to my list this summer, but then I had an idea.  My father-in-law gave us a bunch of quarts of tomatoes he canned last summer, and I still had some left.  I decided to use those to try out the tomato soup recipe so I could see how it tasted before I allocate our precious summer tomatoes to a recipe I've never tried.

I ran 6 quarts of tomatoes through the food mill to remove the seeds and doubled the tomato soup recipe.  If a recipe is going to have to cook for three hours, I'm going to make a BIG batch.  When it was finished simmering, I used my immersion blender to puree it in the pot.  And then I tasted it... wonderful.  It had just the flavor I was looking for:  simple and tomatoey.  And, it goes well with this delicious recipe for easy, creamy macaroni and cheese.

We ended up eating some that day (Molly gobbled it up), putting about 2 quarts in the fridge, and I froze another 3 quarts.  This recipe will be definitely be on the priority list this summer.  We'll see how much canning I get done with baby #2 due 9/15....!