When Raindrops Keep Fallin on my Head and We’re all Qmin’ at Natalie’s House Tomato Soup

2 ½ tbl butter

2 cloves garlic, finely chopped

1 medium onion, chopped

1 tbl or more dried basil

2 tbl flour

3 medium tomatoes, chopped

¼ cup tomato paste

dash of baking soda

salt and pepper as you like

½-1 cup peas (I generally shuck about a ¼ kilo and it's a good amount)

2 cups vegetable stock or water

dash balsamic vinegar

½ cup milk or plain yogurt

• Melt butter in a medium saucepan and sauté garlic, onion and basil for 5 minutes or so.
  
• Stir in flour, then tomatoes, tomato paste, peas, baking soda, salt and pepper, and stock or water. Bring to a boil and simmer for 20 minutes.
• Let it cool enough to be safe in the blender and puree it until smooth.
  
• Return the soup to the pot, heat, and add vinegar and milk or yogurt.
  
• Enjoy!

This soup is oober yummy and warming while its freezing and snowing outside. As the long title says, this soup was created at Natalie's when she had me and my cats over for a few days because it was literally pouring inside my house. I realize tomatoes are not really in season in the winter, but they are grown nearly year-round in Agadir (the California of Morocco). I pretty much keep strictly to seasonal foods here, but they do keep tomatoes abundantly available and importing from Agadir is not nearly as bad, I would say, as pineapples in January from South America to Missouri. Anyhow, not my best defense, but this soup is just too darn good. And peas, which are high in protein, really do have a limited season and I'm trying to use them in everything before they are gone for the year. This soup goes great with yogurt basil biscuits, which are in the PC Morocco cookbook, or my famous wheat focaccia, the recipe of which I'll post here soon. Also, our foolish friend Jed accidently left his real Italian parmesan cheese, so we grated in some of that too, and it was better than icing on a cake.