Garden Tomato Base Soup or Sauce

I am having a hard time keeping up with the garden this season. With work, school and all the other committees or groups I work with, it's just been a lot. I knew I had to get in there and do some watering, weeding and picking of fresh food. So, one night last week, I came home from work and took the Girls over thinking I'd work into the night, sweating, pulling weeds, trimming vines, and really get the garden back in shape. Well, I didn't get much maintenance completed because most of my time was spent harvesting a ton of tomatoes, and other vegetables and herbs!
What the heck was I going to do, for a party of 1, with all these tomatoes? I am not ready to bust out the canning gear. I already have some delicious sauce saved in the freezer. I don't have dinner or lunch really planned for this work week, so I should do something with it that will be eaten this week. But that's a lot of tomatoes! So I decided I would make a giant batch of "base soup or sauce" and use it to make 5 different meals this week. I thought it might be fun to see what different things I can create with the same base ingredients.
So far, so good. I'll post them as I get time. But one night was tomato basil soup with grilled chevre sandwich and the other night was creamy, spicy curry soup with grilled Na'an. Next, I think I'll make a sauce and smother grilled eggplant (see those lovely fairytale eggplants above? mmm...) and polenta or maybe make a minestrone...oh, there's a dish I remember making that involves doughy biscuits and tomato soup, that might be nice...
But for now, I am going to share the method and ingredients for the Base Soup or Sauce. I used what I had in the cupboard and fridge. If I were planning this ahead of time I probably would have used more carrots and less celery. As it was I had a little over 1 C of chopped onion, and a little less than 1 C of each celery and carrots. I also had about 40-45 romas and 3 medium sized beef-steaky types  (both are  called some other names as heirloom tomatoes, but I can't remember them).

Ingredients:
27, Italian (Roma) Tomatoes, blanched and peeled - I weighed them, but I don't know if my scale is that accurate and the calorie tool I use didn't want weight, it asked for #. The weight was 40oz.
3, medium tomatoes, peeled - again I weighed these and they were about 10 ounces
1+ C Onions, chopped
-1 C Carrots, chopped
-1 C Celery, diced
1 T Olive Oil
4 tsp Garlic, minced
1 tsp white pepper powder
1 C cup water





Make it

1. Wash, blanch in hot water then a cool water bath, and peel the tomatoes. I didn't bother seeding them, but you can if you want to work that much harder. 
2. Chop celery, carrots, onions and mince (or use jarred garlic) garlic.
3. Add everything to a giant stock pot.
4. Add white pepper and water. Boil on high for 15 minutes, reduce to simmer. Blend with hand held blender.
5. Cover and cook down for 45 minutes or longer if you have time. 

This makes a chuncky-ish type base. By the time this base was finished, I was really hungary. My first meal with it then is not my most creative work. I just made a really simple soup without blending or processing further and dressed it up with a grilled sandwich. It was really great. But I sat and thought of other, creamier ve chevre rsions. Stay tuned...

Serving Size: 5, 1.5 cup servings

Nutritional Info

• Servings Per Recipe: 5
• Amount Per Serving
• Calories: 140.5

• Total Fat: 4.2 g
• Cholesterol: 0.0 mg
• Sodium: 73.9 mg
• Total Carbs: 26.0 g
• Dietary Fiber: 6.2 g
• Protein: 4.4 g