$1 Tomato Soup

Dear Meg-
I am writing to you because this may be the only way that I bring myself to write.
Every day as I grow deeper and deeper into my values, and they into me, I struggle to keep quiet this compulsion to evangelize for less. Less purchasing, less debt, less work, less waste... And in all of it, comes a life of less labour and more creation. Lucky for me I see gardening and food gathering as part of creation.

I'm reading some John Ralston Saul right now on the Collapse of Globalization. While he is speaking to societies, in each idea he speaks to you and I. The gusto of this current chapter is set on choice, and how more of us have the self-confidence to make choices than are willing to admit, and most of us with that self-confidence have been continually preached the inevitability of world markets, systems, and governments, and so are disengaged from the very structures through which we could almost imagine exercising choice: government. And all this got me thinking about tomato soup.

Making tomato soup is an edible representation of my choice for a marginal existence. There is so much waste in the systems that organize our lives that I find myself doing all I can to avoid contributing. I've all but stopped purchasing clothing. I grow food when I can, I walk as my primary means of commute. I reuse and recycle, but hold most strongly to the long forgotten first R: reduce.

The tomato soup that I made tonight was a different beast of consumption. I didn't purchase greenhouse tomatoes. Instead, I saved them from needless destruction and liberated them to their true calling- deliciousness! And how did I liberate them? A little exercise known as dumpster diving.

Where I live we have a few great dumpsters that are easily accessible. And while lately security guards have been piling palettes on top, in the last few visits I've scored a lot of really great vegetables. Between my garden and the dumpsters I visit I don't buy any produce over the summer. And now, in the tail end of winter, I'm using the last of my tomatoes to make room for next year.

I was actually surprised by how much I liked this soup. After having only canned soup for so long I thought this would be too tart but a little sweetener cuts that back substantially. It was so super tasty that I'm revved up for saving more tomatoes from their terrible fate. Tomato soup is delicious already, especially this recipe, and even more so when it was just about free.

$1 Tomato Soup

Ingredients
One freezer bag mostly full of frozen tomatoes of varying quality
One onion (paid for)
One or two carrots (paid for)
One wilty stalk of celery (paid for)
4 cups of stock (homemade)
Basil, thyme (or Italian spice blend), lime or lemon juice, sweeter (I don't cost out spices but more on that later)

Instructions
Collect all your tomatoes through the year that are too soft to eat or have been scavenged from the corporate food system. Wash them and freeze them whole. Freezing whole is way easier than the alternative. Put all your tomatoes in a big bowl of piping hot water.

So many tomatoes!

As they soften, gently squeeze them so the flesh pops out of the skin. It's so cool how it easily slides! Grandpa taught me that. Allow them to continue to thaw in the water.

Looks gross, tastes great. 

Chop the onion, carrot, and celery, and heat with an oil till they become the onions are translucent.
Add the whole skinless tomatoes and a litre of stock to the pot. Adjust the fluids by adding water if necessary. In fact, start with less stock to make sure your soup isn't too watery.

Looking in the pot as it came to temperature. 

Add a palm of basil and a palm full of Italian spice blend. The original recipe called for thyme but I got a giant Italian spice blend from a dumpster last summer and used that instead.
Heat for 20 minutes till everything is soft.

After bubbling for 30 minutes the tomatoes had softened to a pulp. 

Let it cool for a bit, then blend with the immersion blender. (I am not patient enough to wait for it to cool but I should say that).
Add a squirt of lemon or lime, a tablespoon of sweetener (brown sugar and honey are great), and salt to taste.

Brown sugar not shown. Remember, lime is for eating, lemon is for cleaning.

Top with sour cream and black pepper. Do not add cream for creaminess. It curdles. Ask me how I know.

Yes please!

This soup is delicious and I feel great about using ingredients that took carbon to grow and would have produced methane if left to decompose anaerobically in a dump. But maybe I shouldn't talk about dumps and dinner in the same sentence :)

Seriously, make this soup. So good! Only problem is now I have a huge pot and only one tiny mouth!