Time for Tomato Soup

 We don't have a greenhouse so have to entrust our tomato crop to the elements.  Some of our plants were from a friend, some from Scooby's dad and some were grown from seed on our windowsill.  During the early summer we covered the grow bags and plants with plastic until the wind got the better of the plastic.  The weather continued to be very un-summer like for, well most of the summer, so the tomatoes were very slow to form.  It wasn't really until the end of August that we started to see even the beginnings of a bumper crop and only now that they are really showing their true colours.  All we needed was sunshine but with the wind threatening to strip the fruits off on a daily basis and the sun proving shy, Phil has been regularly bringing in platefuls to ripen in the kitchen.  We've been using some here and there as they ripen, mostly grilled or roasted but suddenly we had platefuls ready at the same time so it was time for soup!  The secret of a good tomato soup is carrots and luckily we'd had a good year with those too.  We had our soup with homemade bread. 

We don't use exact measurements so be brave and use your judgements and taste buds to create your own.

Cover tomatoes with boiling water and leave to skin them.

Fry chopped onion, garlic and diced carrots and drop in a couple of bay leaves and a handful of chopped oregano (both from our garden too!).

Drop in the chopped skinned tomatoes, bit of bouillion, splash of balsamic (not too much though), a squeeze of tomato puree and a splash of chilli sauce if you like that sort of thing. 

Add water and boil for 10 minutes or so, take out the bay leaves then blend.

If you like a smoother soup, push it through a sieve to remove seeds.

Enjoy!...and don't forget the carrots.