it's just a grilled cheese and tomato soup kind of day.

I love soup. I wish I could eat a hot bowl of soup at any point in the year and really enjoy it, but I just can't if the day isn't right. I need a cold day. I need comfy shoes and a hoodie. I wouldn't say no to a blanket, either. Something about a great bowl of soup not only warms me physically, but emotionally as well. All is well with the world when you have soup.

Yesterday was a perfect soup day.

The boyfriend and I went for a nice long walk in a park yesterday afternoon. Towards the end of our walk I started talking about dinner. I can only go so long without talking about food, people. I pitched the idea of grilled cheese, since it's simple and deeeeeelicious. Oh, and it has cheese. We love cheese. Then the boyfriend said these magic words: "how about tomato soup?"

Grilled cheese + tomato soup = perfection.

Since I was on a bit of a cooking streak this past weekend, I decided that we wouldn't have just any old grilled cheese. Nope! It was going to be fancy. The end result? Homemade tomato soup and toasted fresh mozzarella, tomato and pesto (homemade, of course!) sandwiches on baguette. Pretty simple, very tasty. Want to see a picture? Of course you do:

I totally forgot to take pictures as I cooked, but I can tell you how I made the soup anyway. I was going off of memory from the tomato soup recipe I followed back in London (way back when) for my last dinner at Lauren's house.

Tomato Soup

~1 large + 1 small can canned tomatoes (I used fire-roasted)

2 stems of celery, chopped

1 medium onion

~1c carrot, chopped

2-3 cloves garlic

~1/2c chicken stock (beef or veggie might make more sense but chicken's what I had)

~1TBSP olive oil

Heat olive oil in a stock pot

Add garlic, saute for a couple minutes on medium heat

Add onion, carrot, celery, cook until soft (about 10 minutes)

Add chicken stock and tomatoes, cook for another 10-15min

Add salt and pepper, to taste

Remove from heat and use a blender to puree the ingredients into soup

Enjoy!

I could make an attempt to give you the recipe for the pesto, but it would be even more estimations than I gave you for the soup. But it's basically just garlic, olive oil, parmesan cheese, pine nuts and basil thrown in the food processor. Maybe, if I love you enough, I'll remember to write things down (slash measure) next time I cook. That would be nice of me, wouldn't it?