Tomato Soup Shouldn't Be This Hard

I realized something recently: tomato soup, when not out of a can, is really freaking delicious! There are two restaurants at Disney (one to which we will not return thanks to their dismal service) that have sublime tomato soup, and I've been inspired to try my hand at it.

Side note: my desire to make soup from scratch centers around the first time I made chicken pot pies from scratch and I realized that sauteing onion, celery, carrot, and garlic makes your whole house smell like you are cooking from scratch. I don't know why people don't do that when they are selling a house instead of baking brownies!

So I searched "Sanaa tomato soup recipe" and "Turf Club tomato soup recipe" online to no avail. Turf Club's tomato soup is really just sort of normal tomato soup, served with a giant blob of goat cheese in the middle, and with toasted baguette slices all around the bowl. Sanaa's is more like a bowl of delicious roasted tomato with none of the other crap. Theirs has chunks of paneer cheese, which is this weird non-melting cheese the consistency of tofu. Sounds gross, but it isn't. But that's neither here nor there, because I can't find either recipe.

Scott and I searched all of our cook books last night, and found a whopping two tomato soup recipes. One had mashed potato flakes (because nothing says 'cooking from scratch' like adding a product that's more sodium than calories) and the other had chicken stock. I passed on both.

I finally found a recipe online for tomato-basil cream soup that's simple enough that I know I can handle it. And it starts with onion, garlic, celery, and carrot. Sadly, it ends with 3 cups of heavy cream. I suggested substituting milk, but Scott doesn't like that idea. We may compromise with half of each.

And I need to email Disney to ask for the other two recipes.