Sunday, October 23, 2011

Green Tomato Soup

I always use the end of the tomatoes from my garden for this, so we really only get to make one pot a year. It's probably about 2 1/2 - 3 lbs of tomatoes.

Lots of tomatoes - ripe, unripe, anything in between
Hamhock or smoked pork shank
1/2 Stick of Butter
Peppered Bacon (2 or 3 slices)
Fresh Chard (5 or so large leaves)

Wilt the Chard in a frying pan with the bacon. When the chard is totally wilted, separate it from the bacon. Chop up your bacon and throw it in the soup pot, set the chard aside.

Saute the hamhock/pork shank in the butter. (You don't need to worry about cooking these pieces through, they're already cooked, but you'll want to cook off some of the fat.) Pour the drippings into your soup pot. Clean the meat off of your ham pieces. Throw out the skin and keep the bone for other soup.

Chop up the tomatoes and throw them all in your soup pot. Cook until tomatoes break down and the soup starts to take on the consistency of a sauce. When you're happy with the consistency of your soup, stir in the chard. Adding the chard at the end prevents it from cooking down to nothing and disappearing into the soup.

Enjoy! With Peppered Bacon, you likely will not even need to add salt and pepper.

34.6

I totally earned my day in pajamas today. Yesterday my mom and I went on another Epic Bike Ride. 34.6 miles on the D&L Trail! We rode from Laurys Station to Bowmanstown and back. It went pretty well, although we're both a bit achy today. Also, we're bummed, because the Weissport Segment isn't open yet.

We rode Glen Onoco to White Haven and back over the summer, so we've gotten to see quite a bit of the trail at this point. I'm looking forward to the trail getting finished, it'll be 165 miles eventually.

Today wasn't a total loss though, I did make my annual pot of Green Tomato and Ham Soup! And we added Swiss Chard to it this year.

Also, I got a lot of work done on the next baby afghan I have to finish.