An American Classic, From Scratch

If you are new to FROM SCRATCH WEEKENDS, here is the deal.  My husband and I choose a meal we would like to make from scratch.  Not partially from scratch, but as much from scratch as possible.  This means making our own breads and pastas, as well as using fresh ingredients.  Sometimes you do have to draw the line with how far you take it, but the idea is to get down and dirty in the kitchen and experiment.  It doesn't always have to come out good, but I want to be able to say (even if only made once) "I can make that from scratch!".  We do this on the weekend because we like to invest some time into our meals and things are more relaxed on the weekends.  Plus, it makes good leftovers for during the week.

With being so busy this week and having class all day Saturday and all day Sunday, I was glad Ryan took charge of 'from scratch' weekends and picked out a fantastic meal idea.  As it was Super Bowl Sunday, what better way to celebrate this day than with an American classic.  Yes, I am a vegetarian, so no steak and potato types recipes here, strictly a vegetarian classic!

If you are thinking grilled cheese and tomato soup, you are correct.  We even got creative with the bread.  Here was Ryan's selection:

The tomato soup recipe came from the Joy of Cooking cookbook.  Simple enough:

Starting with the bread.  Look at the herbs in this one.

Look at the dough..ready to go...

Then it was tomato time.  I returned home from class just in time for the peeling part.  Ryan had already roasted therse tomatoes over the gas flame of the stove to loosen the skin.  This was not as easy as you would think.

Lots of tomatoes waiting to be peeled.

Scooping time.  I will say we did not fully get the concept of deseeding, but keeping the juices.  In the end we added some water to the tomatoes to give it some liquid consistency.

PEACE MAN!

Onion time.  I get nervous with the onion because the dog is always waiting for something to fall and onions (as well as garlic) are NO NO's for dogs.

Add it to some olive oil over the heat.

Add the tomatoes.

Yes, time to use the magic stick (my new name for this amazing kitchen tool) for the first time.

Tomatoes before the magic stick was applied...

and after!  I love this thing.

Since the soup was almost ready, it was time to slice up the bread.

I like provolone and Ryan likes the classic way with American cheese.

Gotta use this pan for the rgeat grill lines.

Ah, the finished product.  Here is our lovely meal.

An ooey gooey grilled cheese...

...with classic tomato soup.

As always, we enjoyed our from scratch meal by candlelight.

It was fantastic and a great way to start our evening before the Super Bowl.  For us the game started at 10:30 pm so we did not make it all the way through.  Don't laugh, we totaly DVR'd it and just finished watching before we found out that the Saints won!  It was only really funny because we are watching the show How I Met Your Mother and we are in season 2.  The episode we watched the night before was the one where they can't watch the Super Bowl and have to tivo it and spend the whole next day avoiding finding out who won.  Since we don't get commercials here because we watched it on ESPN America, we liked that today we could just fast forward through the breaks.

Now we are making bagels and watching movies since we are both off from work. 

QUESTION:  Have you ever made tomato soup from scratch?  Did you make anything from scratch this weekend?  Did you go to a Super Bowl party?