Meatless Monday

I am trying out something new with our meals - one meatless dinner a week. Tonight was the first of this trial. Homemade tomato soup has been on my list of "recipes I'd like to try" and today was the day to finally try it out. I made roasted cherry tomato bisque with homemade Parmesan foccacia bread.

First I roasted the tomatoes and garlic with olive oil, salt, pepper and thyme. Then in a dutch oven added the tomatoes, garlic and all the liquid, some water and chicken broth and simmered for about 10 minutes. I pureed the soup in my food processor, returned the soup to the dutch oven and added half & half. I was supposed to add a tablespoon of balsamic vinegar but was completely out. Did you know you can substitute 1 tablespoon of red wine or cider vinegar plus 1/2 teaspoon of sugar for 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar? I certainly didn't know that. Thank you Better Homes & Garden for your awesome red check cookbook with list of substitutions in the back. I cannot tell you how many times I have referenced this list in the 7 or 8 years I've owned this cookbook. And while I'm at it I should thank my awesome friend Casey for gifting this cookbook to me years ago!!

For the bread - I used my bread machine for mixing and rising the dough, super easy. Love the bread machine! (thanks also to my sister for giving me her bread machine a few months back!!) I should have started the bread a little earlier this afternoon, however, because I was not able to let the dough rest as long as it should have before baking. We were hungry!! Despite this, the bread was AWESOME!

I think it looks like apple pie or something in these photos but trust me, this was yummy!

As for the soup, well, it wasn't bad or anything but - and maybe I should not admit this - I did not like it as much as the Campbell's Select tomato basil soup and the rest of the family agreed. With the price of tomatoes and the number of steps (and dirty dishes, ugh) and the amount of work this particular soup recipe involved, I'm not sure it will be a keeper for us.

I do think "Meatless Monday" is a keeper though and will continue on with this idea at least until I exhaust all of my vegetarian recipes.