What's For Dinner? Tomato-Basil Soup

I love sharing a good, easy weeknight dinner recipe, and last night I made a great one. I love Tomato-Basil soup, but I've never ventured to make it myself. I saw this recipe in Cooking Light and knew I had to try it. Quick aside, I believe I've mentioned this before, but I love Cooking Light magazine! The recipes in it aren't diet recipes where they completely leave out all the good stuff, they simply offer lighter ways to cook delicious meals. I highly recommend them.

So below and linked you'll find the recipe I followed for last night's Tomato-Basil soup. Everything it called for was easily found at my grocery store, though I imagine the canned fire-roasted tomatoes might be difficult to find in a small-town grocer. Next time, I will likely raid my mother-in-law's garden for basil as the package I bought at the store was barely enough for the full 3/4 cup of chopped basil used in the recipe. My whole family loved both the soup and the asiago cheese bread that we enjoyed as both a side and as croutons in the soup. This is an great weeknight recipe as it only took about 30-40 minutes for the whole thing. It was touted in the magazine's 20-Minute Cooking section, but let's face it, most of those claims are only true if you have a prep chef or actually buy things like pre-chopped onion--and who does that? Not me. Still, there was minimal prep involved, but things did get a little hectic as I was trying to stay on top of the soup without burning the bread in the forget-about-it-for-more-than-a-minute-and-you-burn-it broiler (and I did).

Photo and recipe copyright Cooking Light magazine.

Ingredients

• 1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil
• 1 1/2 cups prechopped onion
• 3 garlic cloves, chopped
• 3/4 cup chopped fresh basil
• 1 (28-ounce) can fire-roasted diced tomatoes, undrained
• 1/2 cup (4 ounces) 1/3-less-fat cream cheese, cut into cubes
• 2 cups 1% low-fat milk
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/4 teaspoon black pepper
• 12 (1/2-inch-thick) slices French bread
• Cooking spray
• 1 garlic clove, halved
• 1 ounce shredded Asiago cheese

Preparation

1. Preheat broiler to high.
2. Heat olive oil in a saucepan over medium-high heat. Add onion; sauté 3 minutes. Stir in garlic; cook for 1 minute. Add basil and tomatoes; bring to a boil. Stir in cheese until melted. Place mixture in blender, and blend until smooth. Return to pan; stir in milk, salt, and pepper. Return to medium-high; cook 2 minutes.
3. Place bread on baking sheet; lightly coat with spray. Broil 1 minute. Rub garlic over toasted side; turn bread over. Top with Asiago; broil 1 minute.

Enjoy!

Gettin' Crafty for Valentine's Day with Pinterest

In today's post you're going to see where the marketer and crafty mom side of me come together. I just finished making some really adorable Valentines for my daughter's preschool class, and while I feel proud of my craftiness, it totally made me question what I had gotten myself into.

When I began looking for ideas for cute, homemade Valentines I went straight to Pinterest to see what others had already pinned out there. I didn't see much, so I did a Google search and found a few cute ideas on the Disney Family Fun site. Right there is where many marketers would take note, I did not start with Google, I went straight to Pinterest. Granted, this is precisely what Pinterest is designed for, but for a site that has been mainstream for less than a year, that's a pretty amazing change in consumer behavior. So anyway, on the Disney site I found these adorable Dum Dum flowers made using scrapbook paper and also some really cute pipe cleaner rings with Hershey's Kisses for the bling. I pinned them on my Pinterest page (I'm pinterest.com/lrose17 for those who want to follow me) and was amazed at how quickly they took off around the Pinterest world. Within an hour or two, my two little Pins had been repinned dozens of times, and it's not like I'm some big crafter with thousands of followers.

In deciding which Valentine to make I was tempted to let the Pinterest world decide for me just do the one that had been repinned the most (the rings), but instead I went with the one that I like the best (the flowers). And that, my blog readers, is where I went wrong. The other was repinned so much because people saw them and said, "Wow! That looks so easy. I could do that!" Instead, I chose the really pretty ones and ended up with a craw instead of a hand at the end of it all. Without further ado, here are some pictures of the finished products:

Pretty cute, right? I'm happy with the finished product, and they actually make for a pretty centerpiece if you make them ahead of time, but I'd file these under "What's wrong with the Mickey Mouse ones from Walgreens?" While they were fairly simple to make, they required too much cutting--thus the craw. For each, I cut some kind of pretty center for the flower, two leaves and three hearts for the petals, then you simply poke small holes in each (I used a small hole punch), place them on a Dum Dum stick and add a little tape at the bottom to help the paper stay in place. I made about 30 of these and in the end, my hand just ached even though I spread out the cutting over the course of three days. I'm glad I made homemade Valentines for once in my life, but next time I'll definitely stick to something simpler or try to find die-cut shapes to use (though I've never had any luck finding those).

I'm going to have to read how others have reviewed these to see if they have the same opinion as me. And if any of my Pinterest followers decided to make these too and now are also left massaging a craw-hand, I'm sorry. When I took them to school this afternoon, my daughter's teacher saw them and immediately said, "Pinterest, right?" Well, sort of. I found them myself and pinned them (you're welcome Disney Family Fun). Now, because I have a lot of marketing-minded friends, here are some fun facts I found the other day on MediaPost's Engage:Moms Blog:

• "Pinterest – which technically is still in closed, invitation-only beta -- drives more sales to retailers than YouTube, Google + and LinkedIn combined and is nearly equal to Twitter’s referral traffic."
• Bloggers are also feeling the love. One blog, For Mamas, "received over 700,000 views for a recipe that became popular on Pinterest--the recipe garnered 77 Pins and had 0 Facebook Likes and only 5 Google + recommendations." Translation: 77 unique people pinned it on Pinterest, then their friends repinned and repinned and repinned, sending roughly 700,000 people to the For Mamas site. Not bad, huh?
• Source: "A Guide To Pinterest and Moms" http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/167614/a-guide-to-pinterest-and-moms.html#ixzz1mItvupZo

Let's see if this post can turn that kind of results for me! I hope you enjoyed a few fun facts about Pinterest and have a wonderful Valentine's Day. And hey, if you read my blog...show me some love and follow me (also, let me know if you run into trouble doing so, I want to know). I know I have more than five readers!