the Dalaverse

I made tomato basil soup yesterday with the help of my new toy Paula Dean (...I'm just gonna leave it). Cobbling together a few recipes, I roasted the tomatoes with garlic (and almost stopped there because they were gorgeous and I just wanted to eat them as is) first and added some cream. Paula chopped the onion nicely, but next time I will be sure to pour the soup in batches into the cylinder provided rather than hand-mixing it in the pot - it, er, splashed. Everywhere. So it wasn't quite as finely pureed as I would have liked, because blending under a plastic shopping bag to prevent soup explosion got old fast. And next time I will use a bit less onion and garlic - I love both flavours, but they were too strong. And it needed more basil. Still, it's quite a good soup and I have enough left for a few meals, even sharing it with Gavin and Mehvash.

Right now I'm planning to muddle up some pesto to get rid of my leftover fresh basil and garlic (the garlic's already roasted, will that screw it up?); I just need to get nuts. And I'm very excited to use the chopper for a noble purpose: salsa. GOOD SALSA. Because I swear to god, all I can find here for a reasonable price is Old El Paso, and that shit is not down. Also hope to find some more economical frozen fruit for smoothies, even if I have to go to Asda for it ::shudders::

Anyway - yay food!

Btw, I'm ignoring the recent...LJness of LJ. Just so you know.