Tomato Soup and Brussel Sprouts!

As a child, my favorite meal was my Mom's tomato soup and grilled cheese. My grandmother made me one of those books that has your name in it and talks about things you love and are relevant to you, and at the end of the book when the heroine (your's truly) returned home, she ate a celebratory meal of grilled cheese and tomato soup. At least I think I'm not making this whole thing up...there was a hand on the cover of the book.

Anyways, what I'm trying to get across is that I loved tomato soup. The Campbell's version. And up until this whole vegan thing took off, I ate Campbell's tomato soup once a week. Now, I've cut back. Mostly because a) I'm not sure Campbell's tomato soup is vegan and b) if the condensed stuff IS vegan, I'm not sure substituting soy milk for cow's milk will get the job done.

So, I went to the internets in search of some tomato soup. I found this recipe on vegweb by "yabbitgirl."

I made it a little differently because I had other vegetables on hand (i.e. I added a lot more celery). I also plopped some of my leftover silken tofu into the mix to attempt to creamify the soup.

Unfortunately, this soup was not ideal. BUT, I do have to admit, things got a little crazy as the transfer of the hot liquid soup to the food processor got underway. That's my LEAST favorite thing to do in the world, I'm pretty sure. Someday I'll have a hand mixer...someday.

I added a bunch of spices and unfortunately, this just could not live up to the Campbell's soup in my mind. But maybe if I could get to the place to accept this tomato soup for what it was, I would like it, but I'm working on it.

ON THE OTHER HAND, I made some BOMB DOT COM brussel sprouts.

Matt told me that I have a gift with the sprouts.

He's a keeper.

And this is MY OWN RECIPE! This is huge, folks, HUGE. Now if only I knew how to measure things out.

I think I had a pound of brussel sprouts. I trimmed them up, and sliced them into quarters (this were big suckers).

Then I heated up some olive oil and balsamic vinegar over medium heat in a pan. Once the oil was hot, I tossed in the sprouts and started to cook them down. I added some beer mustard (had it in the fridge), some seasoning salt, soy sauce, cayenne pepper, and some additional balsamic vinegar to taste but this is really up to you. I just adore the flavors of mustard and balsamic vinegar together. It took about 20 minutes for the sprouts to soften, but I didn't want them too soft, so that's a matter of taste. As the final shazam, I tossed some Panko breadcrumbs onto the sprouts.

So delicious.

And here was the meal.

That's Earth Balance on vegan bread (I will someday attempt my own vegan bread. Today is not that day).

That's also Matt's finger on the plate. He hates taking pictures of food because it slows down the process of getting the food into his stomache.

Anyone have any good CREAMY tomato soup recipes out there?