I'm Back!!!

We made it through the wedding and honeymoon and everything was absolutely picture perfect! The weather was the absolute best for the wedding and we practically spent two weeks in paradise without a drop of rain. After being gone for 3 weeks though, I'm glad to be home and back to our puppy and "real lives."

I'm also glad to not be eating any more restaurant food! After so many days of heavy food and constantly feeling full, I was passing on the delicious banana french toast and craving a bowl of plain rice krispies for breakfast. The food was utterly amazing, but seriously, there is only so much that a person can take before they just want a pb&j for dinner.

So now that we are back and have somewhat woken up from our time change coma, I decided to make the one thing I craved the whole trip but couldn't find anywhere -- grilled cheese. Of course I made our favorite grilled cheese, but since my blog seemed to be feeling a bit lonely over the past few weeks I wanted to make something new too. Hence, this hearty tomato soup. I mean who doesn't love grilled cheese and tomato soup?

The soup was a cinch to put together, even the whole transferring hot soup to a blender and back again, which honestly had me a bit hesitant since I've been known to cover an entire room in margaritas before. The consistency turns out really lovely, kinda thick without being chunky, and gets a bit of creaminess from the added sour cream (which I added instead of creme fraiche). The lemon also added a nice freshness to the soup. The weird thing to me was that it didn't taste much like tomato soup. I thought it would have been much better with a stronger tomato flavor, perhaps the addition of tomato paste would have helped? It tasted more like a pureed veggie soup, which is good in it's own right, but not what I was expecting or craving on this particular occasion. Overall, I would say give this one a pass unless you have some ideas on how to create a stronger tomatoey taste.

Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful well wishes!! It means the world to me - and all of your hopeful thoughts must have worked because everything was a total dream!!

Please visit the link below for the recipe:

Giada's Hearty Tomato Soup with Lemon and Rosemary

Adapted from Everyday Italian - Giada De Laurentiis