Garden Tomato Basil Soup. Grilled Cheese Sandwich. Tomato Slices With Mozzarella, Parmesan & Olive Oil Recipes.

We love tomato soup especially when the tomatoes come from our own garden. We had a big crop in our garden this year and plenty of tomatoes to use up. We grow cherry, roma, grape, beefy boy, earlier girl and any of the heirlooms. I love the heirloom. The small ones we put on the table and eat them whenever but they will get ripe to fast then I make something out of them, either soup, spaghetti sauce or chili sauce. This hub has my recipe for tomato soup.

My grilled sandwich is probably not the best way to make a grilled cheese sandwich, but it is the way we like it and so good. I like it because the cheese melts so nice.

Winter is here and the time of year for soup. I froze some of my tomatoes so I can make this soup in the winter months with tomatoes from our own garden.

INGREDIENTS:

4 cups chopped fresh Tomatoes

2 tablespoons butter

1 chopped onion

1 tablespoon sugar

2 tablespoon flour

2 cups chicken broth

1 can tomato sauce

few fresh chives from garden chopped

1 teaspoon of oregano

1 teaspoon Cilantro

2 teaspoon basil or 2 cups or fresh basil leaves

1 teaspoon salt

DIRECTIONS:

Remove all stem ends from tomatoes then chop the tomatoes up.

Melt the butter with the chopped onions in a stockpot, cook until onions are clear, add sugar and cook until caramelized. Add flour and mix together to make a roux cooking until medium brown. Add chicken broth and tomato sauce; mix well add spices then add tomatoes cook until tomatoes are well cooked and mushy. Than remove from heat and cool once cooled place in blender and blend until creamy. Reheat and eat.

You don't have to put this recipe in a blender if you don't want to. It's good without blending. We like ours creamy. You can also add different spices whatever you may have in the garden or add peppers for some heat.

You can also cook the whole tomatoes in a pot of water till hot and skins will pop off, remove the skins then add them to the soup and cook until mushy.

Of course, if you have tomato soup. You have to have grilled cheese. I know it should be real slices of cheese, but I love my grilled cheese made from Cheese Whiz. I know it's crazy, but that's what we like.

♥ 2 slices of bread.

♥ Cheese Whiz

♥ Butter

Spread the cheese whiz on the bread put the two slices together. Spread butter on both sides add to pan. If you don't have soft butter just cut in squares and add about 3 squares to one side flip that side in pan then while one side is cooking I add butter squares to the other side.

COOK in skillet sprayed with cooking spray on medium heat 3 min. on each side or until lightly browned on both sides.

I sometimes add fried onions to the grilled cheese.

So good.

The tomatoes in the picture were from our garden the first of Sept 2012. They're kind of green yet, but they will ripen. We have some little animal out there that keep knocking off the tomatoes and I find them on the ground. Something was squawking at me the whole time I was out there sounds like a parrot, but I think it may be a young raven. We sure don't have parrots in Wisconsin.

This is our garden it's not a huge garden but big enough for us. We also grow tomatoes in hydroponic planters. This year we had more trouble because we got potato beetles in our garden, something we had never had before. We finally got rid of them.

The picture's of one of the potato Beetle in our yard.

Tomatoes are easy to grow in a garden or in a planter on the patio. You just have to give them a lot of sun, water, and a little fertilizer.

We like to grow many of the small tomatoes like grape, patio, cherry and roma. We like to put them in a bowl and pop one in our mouth as we pass by during the day, so good. The smaller tomatoes are very easy to grow in a pot if you don't have an area for a garden.

We grow the larger tomatoes for slicing and for sauces such as early girl, beef steak and we love the heirloom tomatoes they are so sweet. We planted in heirlooms called Mister Stripey, Cherokee Purple and Brandywine Tomato.

Tomatoes are a fruit and from the nightshade family. They're a great source of fiber with little amount of calories. They are also a good source of vitamin C and in lycopene.

Tomatoes right out of the garden sliced covered in parmesan and mozzarella.

1 large tomato

olive oil

Garlic salt

Freshly grated Parmesan cheese

1 to 2 mozzarella medallions

Pour oil on tomato. Add salt, Parmesan and mozzarella medallion.

Place under broiler until the tops brown. Be sure to watch closely.

Each year I seem to have different variety heirloom tomatoes. There are more than 600 varieties. The picture below is a heirloom and works great for making tomato slices with Mozzarella. Parmesan and olive oil.

Some of the names of heirloom tomatoes:

Brandywine Red Tomatoes

Cherokee Purple Tomatoes

Mr. Stripey

German Red Strawberry

Black Kim