homemade tomato soup = FAIL!

The tasty juice ... before I ruined it.

I had such good intentions.  I really did.

It smelled faboosh, looked halfway decent ... but taste?  Ah, no.

In my recipe organizing frenzy I came across an "easy" tomato soup recipe and I foolishly thought to myself "hey, I can do that!"  I used my beloved juicer, Jack.  (Yes, I named my juicer, doesn't everyone name their appliances?)  I had all the stuff on hand and we are scraping fridge bottom until payday and grocery shopping so I was feeling pretty proud that I came up with something that would appear complex but was still "easy" supposedly.

I think I went wrong in that I had to use almond milk instead of cow juice.  We don't have any real dairy in our house due to allergies, and in most things I can substitute the almond milk without an issue or needing to change anything else.  Perhaps that is why this went wrong, but it was watery and bland.  I also added more "juice" to the soup but still had the right quantity of juice overall so I wasn't worried.  We have plenty left over, so I will be trying to doctor it up from here because I want it to work, it smells so freaking good!

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Quick Fix Tomato Soup

Ingredients:

1 T flour

1 t sugar

1 c milk

2 c tomato juice

dash black pepper

Directions:

1. In saucepan stir together the flour, sugar and ¼ cup of the milk until smooth. Stir in the rest of the milk.
2. Heat on medium-high until the mixture starts to boil. Reduce heat to medium-low. Stir and cook 8 minutes, or until soup thickens.
3. Slowly, while still stirring, add tomato juice. Continue cooking 1 minute, or until soup is hot.
4. Season with black pepper to taste and enjoy.

Serves 1 and takes 10 minutes.

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The "milk" mixture ... where it all went wrong?

So I had to double it because there were two of us eating (it really bums the husband out when I don't feed him too).  Simple enough, right?  Sigh.  I put all my tomatoes through Jack (the juicer) and didn't have enough juice.  I also have a husband who thinks tomato soup is booooring, so I got clever and juiced a whole red bell pepper and a green bell pepper.  I also stuck like four cloves of garlic in there and a quarter of an onion.  The juice smelled fantastic.  I added some basil, oregano, black pepper and was feeling like I was going to have some tasty goodness for dinner because I took a little taste of the juice and it was yummy.  Not soupy though ... so I added it to the milk/flour/sugar mixture just like the directions say.  I swear I followed them this time.

Sad face.  Its not tasty anymore.  

So I am going to try it again today (maybe its like casseroles and salsa and needs a Sabbath before it tastes right?) and hope for a miracle.  

Anyone have any brilliant ideas where I went wrong?  Though not surprising (cooking fails do occur here) it still bums me out every time!

In the battle of Food vs. Me ... Food wins.  Damn.