Creamy Thai Carrot 🥕 and Chicken Soup with Basil

I harvested our carrots and beets yesterday and decided to make some soup today.  I found a recipe online but I don't always follow recipes, I usually put my own spin on it by tweaking the ingredients. So here's my own take for a Creamy Thai Carrot and Chicken soup with Basil.  

Ingredients:

• Carrots (from our  backyard garden)
• 5 cups of water
• 3 slices of chicken breast (I used leftover rotisserie - this is optional)
• 1 cube Thai seasoning (optional)
• 1 shallot
• 1 clove of garlic
• 1 teaspoon salt
•  5 fresh basil leaves

Procedure:

• Washed and sliced the carrots.  You can choose to peel it but I left mine as is since I brushed it with my vegetable brush.  One good thing about homegrown veggies is that, you can confidently use it without worrying about what's in it since you're the one who grew it.  Nothing beats organic produce. 

• Pour the water in a pot, add the carrots, chicken, shallot, garlic, Thai seasoning cube, and salt.  Bring to a boil until the carrots is soft enough to blend.

• Put everything in a blender and add the cream cheese and basil.  

This turned out so good.  The color  looks more like a pumpkin or squash soup because of the cream cheese and chicken but it's delicious.   You can probably eliminate the chicken and  Thai flavoring but I can tell you that it really made the soup very tasty.  The Thai flavoring gave it a little kick and a really unique twist to an otherwise ordinary carrot soup.  I am not sure why while I was typing  carrot soup, the carrot cake keeps popping up in my head lol.  I had some amish  carrot cake a few weeks ago and it was delicious.

Oven “Sun-Dried” Tomatoes 🍅

Aside from  canning homemade tomato sauce, I am also trying a new way to preserve or prolong the life of our tomatoes this year.  I have a lot of grape and cherry tomatoes in the garden and we can't eat them all fresh all at once so I wanted to try the oven "sun-dried" tomatoes process.

I enlisted my two teens in cutting the tomatoes in half.  So here's what you do:

Procedure:

• Gather all your cherry or grape tomatoes and washed them.  
• Cut them in halves
• Once done cutting, lay them cut side up  in a parchment covered baking sheet (I used foil).
• Season it with salt, black pepper, and whatever herbs you like.  I used oregano and basil on mine.
• Heat oven to 250°F. Line a large baking sheet with parchment paper.
• Bake for 2.5 to 3.5 hours, or until the tomatoes are dried out, keeping an eye on the tomatoes so that they don’t burn.
• Remove from the oven.
• Transfer the sun-dried tomatoes to a jar and fill with olive oil until the tomatoes are completely covered. 
• Add in any desired seasonings.  You can use a clove of garlic or a piece of bay leaf  (which I did).

You may also opt to just storing it without the olive oil, that way you can re hydrate it when you want to use it.  It said the best way to re-hydrate it is to use  tomato sauce to elevate its flavor more but hot water works too.

You can use it for cooking such as soup, pizza, or toss it in a salad.

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Oven”sun dried” tomatoes. We have a lot of cherry and other small tomatoes and we can’t eat them all fresh so I thought of trying sun dried 🍅. It was easier and tastier than I thought it would be. #SunDriedTomatoes #OvenRoastedTomatoes #kamatis #PreservingTomatoes

A post shared by RoC 🛫🇵🇭🇺🇸🇰🇷 (@chubskulitrose) on Sep 1, 2020 at 5:15am PDT