This recipe is a reminder to me that I’ll never be quite as good of a cook as my mother.  I grew up in a home where we always had a large tomato garden, the sort of tomatoes that I swoon for today.  If you’ve never tried a garden fresh tomato, you haven’t really tried a tomato.  This comparison is truer for tomatoes than any other vegetable that I can think of.  The things they sell in the store are not even a close approximation to a true vine ripened tomato (we call store-bought tomatoes ‘pimk cucumbers’, no offense to cucumbers).  Each year my parents grow many bushels of tomatoes and find all sorts of uses for them.  This tomato soup recipe, an original from my mother, is probably one of the best uses we’ve found.  My mother claims that the tomatoes that you pick toward the end of the season, after it has started to cool, that taste ever so slightly mealy, are the best for this recipe…

4 oz – bacon

1 – large minced onion

½ bulb – crushed garlic

12 cups – crushed tomatoes (reserve juice)

1 – juice from a lemon

3-5 Tbsp – All-purpose flour

1 cup – half and half cream

1 cup – chopped fresh basil

2 Tbsp – chopped fresh oregano

Salt and pepper

In a large heavy bottomed soup pot, fry the bacon until very crispy.   Remove the bacon to a wire rack to cool slightly.  Add the onion and garlic to the bacon grease and sauté until clear.  Drain the crushed tomatoes, reserving the liquid, and add them with the onions and garlic.  In a small bowl whisk the flour, tomato juice, cream, and lemon juice.  Pour this wet roux into the large pot and whisk in.  Add half of the basil and oregano.  Crumble the bacon into the pot and let the entire soup cook for 20 minutes or until slightly thickened and well incorporated.  Salt and pepper to taste and add the rest of the basil and oregano.  Using an immersion blender, blend the soup until smooth, and serve.