Homemade: Tomato Soup and French Dressing

This morning we have made some homemade tomato soup. It wasn't planned...I thought I had bought a can of tomato soup at the store...I didn't...I bought Chicken Noodle. How on earth does one mistake chicken noodle for tomato??? I'd like to think it's rather easy to do myself.

At any rate, not having tomato soup meant I needed to make it from scratch. Not the worst thing to do. I have 2 recipes, and truthfully, I sort of blended the 2 together this morning into one recipe to use. I probably can't explain that part to you, but I will share the recipes as they stand, you can play with them yourself.

Cream of Tomato Soup
1/3 c butter
1/2 c. chopped onion (I used dried)
1/4 c flour
3/4 tsp salt (we don't normally use salt, but in this case, it does help with flavor)
1/4 tsp pepper
3 c scaled milk
1 1/2 c hot tomato pulp, sieved

Saute onion in butter (as stated, I used dried...we just added butter to the finished soup mix instead)
Stir in flour and seasons, then add milk, gradually, stirring well and cooking until thickened. Gradually stir in pulp. A pinch or so of sugar can be added as well.

Old Fashioned Tomato Soup
2 c 'pulpy' tomato juice
1/2 tsp soda
4 c milk
1 tsp salt to taste
pepper
1 Tbs butter

Bring tomato juice to a boil. Add soda, then quickly stir in milk. Add seasons, and heat and add butter.

I used my canned tomatoes from the garden, chopped up well. It tastes great....except for the fact that I sort of don't follow recipes very well and always tweak and adjust as I go. This was no exception...I ended up with about 6 c. of tomato pulp/juice in total....but I still only used 4 c milk. Yes, it's a bit on the 'tomatoey' side, but good for what I needed it for.

Which brings me to the purpose of making homemade tomato soup in the first place....I needed French dressing. Yes, it was a long, round-about way to get to French dressing, wasn't it? But it's soooo good.

Spicy French Dressing
1 c tomato soup
3/4 c sugar
2/3 c oil (we use olive for everything here)
1/2 c vinegar
1 small onion -- I used 2 Tbs dried
1 tsp salt
1 tsp Worcestershire sauce
3/4 tsp pepper
3/4 tsp paprika
1/2 tsp dry mustard
1/2 tsp garlic powder

Blend in blender until fully mixed. Store in refrigerator. This made about 2 1/2 cups in total.

Yes...the recipe says it only needs a cup of tomato soup. Obviously, with my using 6 cups of pulp/juice, I have far far more than enough for this batch of dressing plus many many more. We will eat a bit of soup with biscuits for lunch today and the rest of the soup will be jarred up and put into the freezer, or maybe I'll just go ahead and process it for the pantry.