Creamy Tomato Soup and Grilled Cheese Sandwiches

I had my sister, Lori, over for lunch today. It still doesn't seem possible that on any ordinary day I can see family and it doesn't include trips to the airport! It is really nice to be back near our families and friends. For our lunch, I decided that tomato soup and grilled cheese sounded good, especially with a rainy day in the forecast. 

As I was checking out soup recipes the night before, my dear hubby said, "It's probably been a long time since you fixed tomato soup and grilled cheese for Lori." I thought about that for a while and I realized it has probably been a long time, over 38 years! When I got married and moved away from my family home, Lori was 8 years old. I remember making lots of grilled cheese sandwiches back in the day, but the tomato soup always came out of the little red & white can! 

After looking through recipes for a while, I chose a recipe from Relish for Creamy Tomato Soup. I was happy that this soup turned out really good, and in my opinion, much better than the little red can!

The whole process took about 45 minutes. I used fire-roasted tomatoes and a stalk of celery instead of a carrot. It really helps to have an immersion blender but isn't necessary. A regular blender works well, especially if you want to puree it completely. I like my tomato soup to have some texture, so I blended it until it looked right. One other thing, the instructions say to add half and half at the very end, but the recipe doesn't say how much, so I added about 1/3 of a cup. This recipe makes about 10 cups. 

For the grilled cheese sandwiches, I bought a warm loaf of crusty sourdough bread, sliced it and layered it with thin slices of Bandon cheddar cheese, Kerrygold Dubliner cheese and Kerrygold Blarney Castle cheese. I spread one side of the bread with Stonewall Kitchens Old Farmhouse Chutney. I spread the outside with a little butter and grilled them in my Cuisinart Griddler. It was very good!

Enjoy!