Cream of Tomato & Dill Soup

This is the soup I made the other night that I made the cornbread to go with.  I've made this before and it's so easy and delicious...And I really don't even like tomato soup that much.  The aroma from this was so tantalizing that my roommate was drawn from a rather important phone conversation to come into the kitchen demanding to know what I was making that was torturing her so!

Unfortunately, I forgot to take a photo - my bad.  I don't know where my brain was because I did take photos of the cornbread.  Oh well!  Here is the recipe.

Cream of Tomato & Dill Soup

2 lbs tomatoes, peeled, then roughly chopped (de-seed if you feel like it; I didn't)
4 cups water, with an adequate amount chicken boullion dissolved in it (use veggie stock if you don't want to use chicken stock)
1 carrot, 1 onion, and 1 stalk celery, chopped
dill, to taste
1 cup half & half cream (10%)
2 - 3 cloves garlic, or to taste, grated

Saute the carrot, onion, and celery until soft.  Add tomatoes and water/chicken and bring to the boil. Add dill.  Simmer until all the veggies are soft. Add more dill as you feel necessary.  With an immersion blender, or in batches in a food processor or blender, whiz until smooth but still has texture; don't puree.  Add garlic.  Finish with cream and serve.

Sooooooooo good, let me tell you!

And I did a food pricing breakdown, too.  This soup cost me about $0.85/serving.  Way better than canned!

Latest Addiction

The season is changing, the clocks are turned back, and my mood disorder is rearing its ugly head. One of the things this means is that I'm craving crazy foods. Most recently, apart from wanting to inhale chocolate, pizza, and ice cream (ironic, given that it's cold out), I have been on a deviled ham & ramen noodle kick.

It's odd.

And it's not cheap! The ramen is cheap, but canned ham is not. At LOGS, it's $2.99/can. At Safeway, I got a can on sale for $2.49. During my cross border shopping excursion the other week, I found canned ham for about $1.80/can. WTF? That's highway robbery for frickin' ham IMHO!

Anyway, the deviled ham sandwich is such a throwback to church teas and church potlucks, and I was inspired to make a batch of deviled ham after my work put on a tea for the seniors. And I have been hooked ever since.

For those of you not familiar with the bliss that is deviled ham, it's very simple: a can of ham, flaked; some mayo; some sweet pickle relish. That's it. I spread my bread or bun with cream cheese and have a nice dill pickle with my sandwich. It's awesome.

Ramen is ramen. Rarely do I crave this stuff because it's so bad for you, but I seem to be unable to do without it nowadays.

None of this is good for my weight loss goals!

Depression Food

Although I had a junk-out the other day, I have eaten decently during this episode, which is a change.

My brother and SIL had me over for dinner one night this week, and we had Shan's French Onion Soup and BBQ striploins.

I made Eggs in Purgatory one night.

For Cinco de Mayo, I made shrimp quesadillas.

Tonight I made myself a tuna melt & some fingerling fries.

Boring Dinner

Sometimes, you just need a quickie (right, Donna-FFW?).

Yesterday, I attended a boring workshop in which they fed us - and I am not kidding - hot dogs & chips. It's a long story, and quite frankly, the organization who was putting on the workshop did its best on a very small budget, and I'm not opposed to the odd hot dog dinner in my life. Some of the people there were just happy to be fed period. But, after the workshop, and after a stressful day yesterday which led me to be wiped out physically and emotionally today, I just needed a comforting, easy meal. This was it:
This is a chicken sausage I found on sale at the local overpriced grocery store, a Lipton Side Kick, and green beans. Such meals were typical when I was in university, though I generally ate turkey sausages before they became ludicrously expensive. This chicken sausage is not normally something I'd buy because of it's usually selling price, but since it was on sale, I thought I'd give it a go. It was OK - kinda dry and flavourless. I prefer turkey sausage, I think.

I can't be a fancypants all the time, can I?