I am fail, but this soup is not

Ok, so this the first time I’ve written not only on this blog, but on ANY blog in general. It's been a while since this blog was started and it's pretty sad this is the first time I'm posting, sorry to all the hungry people out there. I’m the other nerdy girl, Cymone, and I handle the yummy stuff to eat. Just don’t mix up your food with your make-up, it might not taste that good then. 

For the love of God, please don't mix make-up and dicing!

                So, I love tomato soup when it’s chilly outside and considering it’s in the 30s here in Florida I’d say it’s cold enough. For those of you living in colder areas…sucks to be you! While you’re inside trying to keep warm you might as well make some yummy soup! This recipe makes about 6 servings and takes about a half hour to make. So here’s the ingredients you’ll need:

3 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium onion, diced
1 celery rib, diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
3 tablespoons flour
4 cups chicken broth
2 cans (14.5 oz size) tomatoes
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1 teaspoon sugar
2 bay leaves
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
1/4 cup cream
salt and pepper to taste
croutons and fresh parmesan (optional)

Throw this shit out

So, I’ll throw in some general cooking tips while I’m at it: ALWAYS buy unsalted butter, you can put however much salt you want afterwards. Plus if you need unsalted butter for baking or something you don’t need to buy more butter! YAY! For the garlic, I personally like using fresh garlic and mince it myself but feel free to use the prepackaged stuff to save time. For the tomatoes, I prefer getting canned whole tomatoes so that way I can scoop the seeds out before they go in the pot, I don’t think anybody likes tomato seeds floating around in their soup. For the bay leaves, go with the dried stuff but for the basil you definitely want to go with fresh basil. Dried basil will not do this soup justice since you need that oil that fresh basil lets off.  If you can’t get fresh basil it may be better to just skip it all together instead of paying $3 for dried basil. If you have some dried basil and want to use it, the conversion for fresh to dry herbs is 1 tablespoon fresh=1 teaspoon dry (so 2 teaspoons dry basil)

So first, you’ll want to mince the garlic and dice the celery and onion, I typically just go for as small as possible.  Once that’s done you’ll want to break out the saucepan and melt the butter over medium heat. 

This is a saucepan, smiley face optional

Add in your celery, onions, and garlic and let it cook for 4 minutes. Turn the heat to low and stir in the flour. This is the roux for your soup if you want to sound super smart to people nearby and it’s what thickens the soup. After stirring and getting a nice, smooth roux add in the broth, tomatoes, tomato paste, bay leaves, and sugar (the sugar helps cut some of the acidity of the tomatoes) and bring it to a boil. Once it starts boiling, turn the heat to medium and let it simmer for 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes, take out the 2 bay leaves, toss in the basil, and give it a stir. Then, carefully put all of your soup in the blender and hit puree, you want it to have a smooth texture. If it doesn't all fit then just do it in two batches.

This, however, does not go in the blender

If you don’t have a blender or some kind of food choppy device then you probably should go with diced tomatoes and enjoy a more “rustic” tomato soup (a.k.a. chunky). After the soup is all blended, stir in the cream and season with salt and pepper. For a super delicious finish, once you’ve dished up a bowl of delicious tomato soup, top it with some fresh grated parmesan and croutons (personally I like the garlic & cheese kind). Dig in!

Pathetic humans, prepare to write down the recipe!!

If you get the reference, you're awesome!
Sorry about how late this is related to the posts about the actual food, haha. I've had this post as a draft since the 6th! Now, today I will attempt to transfer my limited cooking knowledge unto you! I will tell you about our Macho Nacho recipe.

So Macho Nachos!
Ingredients: (our recipe fed three people all night long, so I figure this is about 6-8 huge servings)
2 bags of the most flat, intact chips we could find
1/2 of a bell pepper
1 tomato, diced into cubes
1 can/jar white queso cheese ( I know that is redundant but that is name of our cheese, lol, it's cheese cheese)
1 green onion
1 bag of shredded cheese
1 lb lean ground beef
Salsa
2-3 Jalapenos
1 package Taco Seasoning, or seasoning to your taste

(Some ingredients,sorry about that apple slice...I was eating it before I started cutting things up, lol.)

Now, all of these are according to preference, if you like red onions and not green, feel free to do a whole red or vice versa. I suggest adding at least a full bell pepper, we used it because we had it, but really liked the flavor it added and wished there had been more. :) So yeah, most everything on this list is optional other than the chips+ground beef+cheese. We began by browning the beef, then adding the taco seasoning to that. We also had the liquid cheese (white)on the stove, hot and ready to pour. Then, we took a standard baking sheet, like you bake cookies on, and put down one layer of chips, trying to lay them evenly and not have too much overlap. We put down the rest of the ingredients in this order; ground beef, melted cheese, tomatoes, green onion, and jalapenos on one half (his little sister doesn't like spicy), and then the shredded cheese on top of all of that. 

(ground beef and white cheese) (first layer of the nachos completed)

(beginning the second layer) (into the oven to be fully melted)

Then we added yet ANOTHER layer of chips, and added the same ingredients, on top of all of that we spread out our half a bell pepper. After all of that food was layered, we put it in the oven at 375 ( any temp will do, you just want to melt the cheese). Viola, a meal for friends that I'm sure is absolutely horrible for you! :D But so, so delicious.

If you did not get the title reference, you can watch Futurama, specifically ep. 22 season 3 - 30% Iron Chef. :)