Tomato Basil Soup with Grilled Cheese Croutons

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Core then chop the Roma tomatoes into thirds. Put them on a cookie sheet, along with garlic, onion, and shallot. Put them into the oven to roast for about 20 minutes.

Remove veggies from the oven. Place them in a large sauce pan. Add diced tomatoes, basil, parsley, chicken stock, milk, cream and half-and-half. PS, you don’t have to use the variety of liquids that I did… Definitely go with chicken stock, but you can pick a combo of the other three if you’d like. I had all three on hand, so I went with all of them!

Using an immersion blender, blend mixture until it is nearly smooth. I left mine a little “pulpy” if you will—because I wanted some texture. But you can blend it as much as you would like. Once blended, turn heat to about medium, add spices, stir and bring to a boil. Then turn heat down to low and let it simmer for 20 minutes.

While soup is simmering, prepare croutons. Cut bread into tiny equal sized chunks. Also cut the cheese… Ha! Sorry I’m a five year old… But still, you need to cut the cheese into equal sized chunks (the same size as your bread). Prepare a typical grilled cheese sandwich by putting cheese in between two pieces of the bread chunks. Place the mini sandwiches on a cookie sheet and bake at 350 F for about 10 minutes.

Serve soup with grilled cheese croutons piled on top.