Triple Tomato Soup

Fall season cooking is upon us, people! This is by far the best cooking season of the year! I still have a load of summer tomatoes to use up because my plant decided to only give my tomatoes in September. Now it's too cold at night, so I picked all the green ones and are waiting for them to ripen. I did, however, have enough ripe tomatoes to make a batch of tomato soup. Since it's a few days away from payday, I had to just go with whatever I had. Here's how I made it!

1. Cut about 10 tomatoes in half and drizzle with 4 Tbs olive oil with 2 cloves of minced garlic. Sprinkle with dried basil. Roast in the oven (400 degrees) for 20 minutes or so. If you are going to leave the soup chunky, you might want to scoop out some of the seeds before roasting them.

see all those green tomatoes? 

all roasty toasty

2. After letting cool a bit, the skins should be able to just slip right off - discard them.
3. Heat up 1 Tbs of olive oil in a pot and saute one onion until it is softened. Add a couple of ounces of tomato paste and 1/2 cup of oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes. Mix it all up.

4. Add 1 cup of white wine, 1 cup of water, some more basil - I would have used fresh if I had it. Bring to a boil and then turn down the heat to simmer for 20 minutes.

5. I used an immersion blender to puree the soup to the consistency I wanted. Then I added whole milk until it was thin enough to call soup. It needed a little something so I added a little bit of brown sugar and that mellowed it out. 

Triple Tomato Soup
10 tomatoes, cut in half
5 Tbs olive oil
2 cloves minced garlic
Dried basil -- couple Tbs? didn't measure
1 yellow onion
1 cup dry white wine
1 small can tomato paste
1/2 cup oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes
1/2 cup cream, whole milk, milk whatever you want
Salt and fresh-ground pepper


1. Preheat oven to 400 F. Place tomatoes on baking pan, cut side up and drizzle with 4 Tbs olive oil with 2 cloves of minced garlic. Sprinkle with dried basil. Roast in the oven for 20 minutes until soft. (If you are going to leave the soup chunky, you might want to scoop out some of the seeds before roasting them).
2. Take skins off tomatoes and discard
3. Over medium high heat, heat up 1 Tbs of olive oil in a pot and saute onion until it is softened. Add a couple of ounces of tomato paste and 1/2 cup of oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes. Mix it all up.
4. Add white wine, water, some more basil - I would have used fresh if I had it. Bring to a boil and then turn down the heat to simmer for 20 minutes.
5. Use an immersion blender, food processor, or blender to puree the soup to the consistency wanted.
6. Stir in cream and warm. Enjoy

Optional - add in cream at the end and warm
Any of the following are my faves with tomato soup - parmesan cheese, saltine crackers, Annie's Cheddar Bunnies, crusty garlic bread,

Oh and by the way... ButterBean is now driving...

End of Minnesota Summer Fun

Summer has come and gone again! It seems like as soon as the MN Fair is over, BAM! fall comes swooping in. I love the crisp fall air, being able to bake without steaming up the house, wearing hoodies, and so many other wonderful things about fall! BUT this cooler air also means that winter is on it's way. Bleegghhh! Here is a last look as some of the wonderful things of this summer. Good bye summertime!

Fun in the water

boating is exhausting!

 Garden Fresh Sun Ripened Tomatoes

Hours of Sliding in the Back Yard

We were given this monster pink & purple play set from a friend whose daughter has outgrown it. He loves it, but our house now looks like twin girls live here rather than a boy!

Trip to the Sculpture Garden

always running...

Hey look at me! I'm about to make a run for it!!

Ice Cream

The Como Zoo

Farmer at the Fair

This was a few weeks ago, but we went to the Minnesota State Fair! This year ButterBean could actually participate more in the fair experience. We had perfect weather! Some of his favorite things were listening to a Marimba band, looking at dogs in the pet area, and chowing down on some grub. Neither he nor Gatsby joined me in trying "lamb fries" aka: lamb testicles! Not bad, I must say. 
We had a fun time at the miniature pretend farm where kids get a bucket, "plant" corn in the dirt, move hay with their tractors, pick pretend apples, gather eggs etc... 

My little farmer

Mini donuts were a new treat for the ButterBean. Yum!!

Another successful State Fair! 

Mis-happening Me & Musical Baby

Why haven't I posted lately? That would be because I have recently become a klutz extraordinaire! Within a two or three month span I have spilled a half gallon of milk in my car, smashed the spoiler off of my car, broke a bowl, dropped innumerable other items, dumped water on a fellow CRNA...and my most recent costly mistake: dumping a glass of water onto my less than a year old MacBook Air. Horrifying, believe me! The bill to repair said MacBook: just as horrifying!
Anyway... I'm back!

ButterBean seems to be following in my footsteps in more than one way. Not only can he be a klutz (as evidenced by the monster bruise on his forehead and bandaids on each knee) but he has a love of music and dance! I've already written about his love of dance, which continues on strong, especially since I have two dancing sisters that he copies!
Recently he has discovered three musical instruments, all of which he calls "heynhh" (small vocabulary), that he plays whenever he gets the chance. He first found the piano at my parents house and he loves to pound away at the keys. Last weekend he saw a guitar for the first time and his reaction was priceless! From twenty yards away he slowly crept over the the man who was playing the guitar and stood in front of him fascinated. He was shown how to strum and after he made a soft strum, he turned around beaming with pride! He listened to the guitar and played his little strums for probably a half an hour, which is a long stretch of time for ButterBean!

A couple of days later my mom and I showed him the small violin that is at her house. He was just as enthralled with the violin as he was with the guitar! He whines at the violin case until someone will take it out and let him play on it. 

I had a T-shirt on that had a small guitar on it the other day. ButterBean came up and was poking me in the chest yelling "A heynhh!".  It took me a minute but I figured out which "heynhh" he was referring to, but once I figured it out I spent most of the day replying, "Yes, that is a guitar!" to which he would smile and clap.

If I turn the radio off in the car, he yells "A heynhh" until I turn music back on.  I hope he continues to want to play an instrument and that he never stops dancing!

18 Months

18 months old and still the cutest boy to have roamed the earth! I'm a lucky mama!

First I must address the above picture. What time warp was he put in during the taking of this photo? It's like a glimpse of the future adult ButterBean!!

Anyway, at 18 months his favorite words make him a total boy:
"Caw" = car or outside, whichever he feels like
"Daaa" = still raving about dogs
"Baaa" = Ball

Other words just make me laugh every time he says them --
"heenghh", which is lotion, soap, anything else that can be rubbed into skin or into his "hayyh" (hair)...diaper cream in your hair? Sure! Yogurt? You bet! Nothing better than hennghh in your hayyh, right?

Many words are still very similar
"Ba-ul" (Bottle) could be easily confused with "Bah!" (glass of water) or "Baaa", which is ball.
or
"Bey-ee" = belly
"Bay-ee" = berry
"Bay" = bear

And here he is with a favorite toy: mommy's "tone"

Small Town vs. Big City

Visiting me at Serpent Lake 

I'm in a "rural" Minnesotan town. I'm from Minneapolis. 
The differences between people in a city hospital and a rural hospital has struck me as quite funny! 

Example 1: Conversations
Rural Hospital: Nurse 1 -"Hey, what is the best cure for poison ivy?" Nurse 2 - "Brew your own sumac tea and drink it for 10 days before you think you'll be in contact with any poison ivy"
vs
City Hospital: Nurse 1 - "Hey, that smells good, what are you drinking?" Nurse 2 - "Soy pumpkin chai tea latte." 

Example 2: Breakfast
Rural Hospital: eggs, bacon, hashbrowns, muffins, 
vs
City Hospital: everyone brings Greek yogurt with or without fruit and granola...everyone (I secretly eat my peanut butter and honey toast before I get to the hospital so as not to be ridiculed ;) jk)

Example 3: Conversations again
Rural Hospital: Nurse 1 - "My brother and father-in-law are both buying Ice Castles! (enormous fish houses for ice fishing. they apparently have everything you could possible need. I know nothing about ice fishing) I can't wait for winter!" Nurse 2 - "Oh, jealous!"
vs
City Hospital: Nurse 1 - "We just booked our trip to Cancun for this December." Nurse 2 - "That's so great! You have to go to a warmer climate at some point during the winter, or you just go crazy!"

Example 4: Opinions on Commuting
Rural Hospital: 5-10 minute commute...15 tops
vs
City Hospital: 20-30 minute commute...1.5 hours tops

Example 5: Conversations once again
Rural Hospital: "I got my paintball gun calibrated this weekend" (I think he said calibrated...like ice fishing, I know nothing about paintball guns)
vs.
City Hospital: "The show at Guthrie Theatre this weekend was amazing!"

All true examples! 
These three weeks of rural Minnesota have proved I'm more of a city girl, though I don't think it needed to proved. 
Besides missing my adorable bundle of giggling boy, I also miss my grocery store, full of organic goodness...slim pickin's at the grocery store up here!

Turns out sand doesn't taste good...ButterBean now knows this

Away from home

Part of being in anesthesia school in a metro area means that I don't get very much regional experience (spinals, epidurals, nerve blocks) and so I have to go out to rural hospitals to get that! I've been 2.5 hours from home for two weeks and still have one more week to go. I've gone home on the weekends, but otherwise have been living in a call room in the hospital! It's like being back in the dorms - walking down the hall to the bathroom, needing a key to get everywhere, no kitchen. Yep. I've tried to study a bit, sit out by the lake that is only a couple of blocks away...but really I've use this time to watch lots and lots of Olympics! USA!
Three weeks is a long time to be gone from little ButterBean, so this week my mom brought him up Wednesday through Friday so that I could see him in the evenings. 
He has a had a great time with the lakes near by!

All of his running around has resulted in something he has never done before: fall asleep on the hotel floor! 

We had a lovely dinner on a golf course, where ButterBean had a great time running free! His new word is "car", which comes out like a question, "caw?". Most conversations now sounds like "mumble mumble mumble, BALL (baahhh)!! mumble mumble Caw? mumble mumble mumble naNAAHH?" I must talk to him with a lot of questioning inflection because his conversations always sound like a continuous string of questions. 

ButterBean's favorite food: Ketchup!

A baaaahhhh!!

I'm so glad he was able to come visit me!!!