Two-Can Ten-Minute Homemade Tomato Soup ♥ Quick Recipe

Today's easy homemade soup recipe: Tomato soup made from scratch in just ten minutes. No "weird" ingredients like canned tomato soup and lower in calories, too.

So I suspect that purists won't consider this homemade soup. After all, I didn't till the soil to grow the tomatoes and I certainly didn't toil over a hot stove canning summer tomatoes, all to toss together an easy, steaming bowl of tomato soup during the cold and damp of a Midwestern winter.

But here's why for me, Two-Can Ten-Minute Homemade Tomato Soup not only qualifies, it rocks. Let's look at the ingredient lists.

Diced Tomatoes: Tomatoes.*
Tomato Sauce: Tomato Concentrate, Salt, Onion Powder, Garlic Powder, Citric Acid, Natural Flavors, Dried Bell Pepper.*
* Caveat: It took careful examination of several labels to find diced tomatoes and tomato sauce without sugar.

versus

Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup (Australia**): Tomato Puree, Sugar, Onions, Modified Tapioca Starch, Salt, Garlic, Acidity Regulator, Natural Flavors, Xanthum Gum, Natural Food Color, Herbs, Spices.
Campbell's Condensed Tomato Soup (United States**): Tomato Puree, High Fructose Corn Syrup, Wheat Flour, Water, Salt, Potassium Chloride, Flavoring, Citric Acid, Sea Salt, Ascorbic Acid, Monopotassium Phosphate.
** Fascinating, the difference in the ingredient lists between canned tomato soup in Australia and canned tomato soup in the U.S. Are the soups actually different or do the labels reflect differences in labeling laws?

Besides, did I mention it takes just ten minutes to make this soup? That's start-to-finish, with plenty of hands-off time to make grilled cheese sandwiches. Yahoo, lunch!
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Why I Switched from Weight Watchers to Medifast

No recipe today but instead a story, one of Choice and Hope and Compromise.

You'll find the story posted on Kitchen Parade, Why I Switched from Weight Watchers to Medifast. There's a lively discussion there, come join the chatter!

A Veggie Venture is home of 'veggie evangelist' Alanna Kellogg and the
famous asparagus-to-zucchini Alphabet of Vegetables.
© Copyright Kitchen Parade 2013

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How to Roast a Pepper (Capsicum) on a Gas Stove ♥ Techniques, Tricks & Tips

Today's quick & easy way to roast one or two sweet peppers or hot chilies right on the stove, a gas stove, that is.

To roast a pepper – the sweet peppers like green bell peppers, yellow and orange bell peppers and especially red bell peppers – is to change not only its texture but its flavor. A raw pepper is wet and crunchy, a roasted pepper is slippery and smoky.

This same technique works not only with sweet peppers but also with hot chile peppers with a little or a lot of heat. My favorite pepper for roasting is a poblano chile (as picture) but I've also roasted jalapeños and other chiles.

Mostly it's a hands-off operation, just throw the pepper on the fire, then carry on in the kitchen – no wandering off, now, it's not that hands-off! – keeping an eye on the roasting process, turning as needed.

The technique is best for roasting one or two peppers, for a whole trayful, you'll want to follow this technique that works in both gas and electric ovens, How to Roast Peppers in the Oven.

And I should add one more thing, and that's that when I was cooking on a typical kitchen stove, I didn't have much luck roasting peppers this way, it seemed to just take too long. So it's possible that this technique works only with high-BTU commercial stovetops like Viking and Wolf. Or maybe you have more patience than I!
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