And then it was soup.

I started to make a warm spinach salad. I sliced some bacon into lardons, cooked them with red onions, mushrooms and spinach and began thinking about using as pasta sauce instead. So I started adding a bit of chicken stock and as I poured it looked better and better and I kept pouring. I added a bit of the afore mentioned tomatoes, put it in a bowl and topped it with some grana. It just sort of became soup. And it's good. Sweetness from the onion and tomato. Salty from the bacon. Rich from the broth and musky from the mushrooms. The spinach still has some crunch. Rainy day. Perfect dinner.

New Toy

When I said I'd write about the roasting tomatoes later I didn't really mean days later but, oh well. That's the way it's going.

Debbie brings me stuff from the farmers market all summer and there's usually a point when she brings way too many tomatoes. Every year I end up making some kind of tomato sauce and every year I fret the seeding and peeling. It's just messy and I never feel like I do a great job. I always wish I had a food mill.

Last week when Jane was in town we went to Sur Le Table and I found one. It's the perfect size for me.

Food mills are great for mashed potatoes. I like lumpy mashed potatoes. I'm usually cooking just enough for me so I smash them a bit and call

it good enough. But if you run potatoes through a food mill they get evenly mashed and stay fluffy. Add salt, pepper and butter and you get smooth, creamy, melt in your mouth clouds. I did this yesterday because I was making a shepherds pie for a neighbor.

So. I was roasting the tomatoes. I let them cool before I ran them through the mill. I used the blade with the largest holes because I wasn't sure what I wanted and tada! Lovely clear tomatoes on one side, seeds and skins on the other. All in about a minute. Less muss, no fuss.

I tossed the thing into the sink before scraping the bottom of the blade, which makes me so mad. There was so much good stuff there. It's been years since I used a mill and I've forgotten the basics. There are some seeds and I think I could run them through again with smaller holes but I don't really mind a few seeds.

I have a nice amount of sauce, some of which will end up on pasta. I'm thinking about making soup.

I love new toys.

Food Blogging

Need To Know did a list of must read food blogs. I had a mixed reaction. I felt completely not-good-enough but also ... the truth is ... I didn't love any of them. I think I remember Chocolate and Zucchini from awhile back. But I didn't remember it being so glossy and full of ads. It's like a magazine, which I think is cool, sort of. But I like my blogs more home-made-ish.

The last time I looked around I ended up finding some blogs that seemed interesting. Yesterday I tried and failed. I was thinking about adding a blog roll in my new attempt to read and write more. I'm trying again today.

I'm also struggling with the blog design.

There are tomatoes roasting in the oven. Maybe I'll write about that later.