Cream of Sungold Tomato Soup

I'm discovering and learning right alongside Nicholas, which makes my soup recipe appropriate for this blog. In case you were wondering. ;)

So--I've attempted a vegetable garden three times now. The first was just before I got pregnant (March 2011), the second was last year when we moved into our ill-fated house on the water (May 2015) and the third--the one that's been successful--is this year's garden. We're not really church people but a local church dedicated a significant expanse of its property to a community garden and built fifty raised beds, which the church "rents" to community members. As soon as I heard about it, I knew the community garden was the place for me.

Except for one incident (The Sad Case of the Vandalized Sugar Snap Peas), I've really enjoyed the experience and learned quite a bit. Nicholas helped me plant and goes with me to weed, water and harvest, and while he becomes bored pretty quickly, I think he's learning too. He begged me to plant corn but there was no room in the garden beds, so we have a planter with four corn seedlings on the porch.

Anyway, our garden features two zucchini plants, one cucumber plant, three green bean plants, two sun gold cherry tomato plants, two "regular" tomato plants, two spaghetti squash (which I believe are actually a hybrid called stripetti because they're, well, striped) and two butternut squash plants.

The zucchini and cucumbers have been producing to the point that I've started a freezer stock of shredded zukes and pickled cukes. The sun golds recently started ripening. In an effort not to let any go bad, I've been exploring options for preservation.

As it turns out, there aren't many options for preserving cherry tomatoes. I found one that looked promising but I messed up because I decided to wing it (the usual reason for something going awry) and I had to improvise. The result?

Cream of Sun Gold Tomato Soup, which is a perfect freezer food, all ready to go--just pull, thaw and eat.

The recipe is simple. Reeeeeeally simple.

Ingredients for about 2 cups of soup:

Approx 1 pint of sun gold tomatoes (other cherry tomatoes would work too, it just wouldn't be cream of sun gold anymore)

A clove of garlic

A generous splash of olive oil

Salt, pepper, oregano, basil, a sprinkle of red pepper flakes.

Approx 1.5 cups milk (I used 2%, you could certainly use lower fat or even whole milk or cream)

Instructions:

Combine everything except milk in a baking dish. Roast at 350 for an hour and a half or so, until the skins start to carmelize and the tomato liquid is more like syrup than water. Remove tomatoes from oven. Cool. Combine roasted tomato goop and milk in a blender or food processor (the smoothie cup for my Ninja was perfect) and blend until smooth. Pour into quart freezer bag, label with a permanent marker, and stash in the freezer for a mid-winter pick-me-up.

It's okay if you snack on the roasted sun golds while they're cooling. ;)