Speedy Tomato Vegetable Soup

Margo Oliver was an iconic Canadian food journalist, who published in the Weekend magazine we'd get with the newspaper on, well, the weekend!

I googled Margo Oliver, and found a delightful blog of recipes clipped and saved by a soul as busy as I have been over the years ...

I copied this recipe into the "green cookbook" a good twenty-five years ago, but hadn't made it in at least a decade. A cold rainy day not long ago called for soup, and this came back to mind. It's so basic, so quick and so good.

Yes, the photo is of an Andy Warhol painting; many don't know what Consommé is, so how better to show it?

See below for an even simpler, very elegant clear soup to serve at dinner parties (yay! people are having dinner parties again!)


Ingredients

• 2 Tbsp. butter
• 1/2 cup chopped onion
• 2 stalks celery, sliced medium (cut the stalks lengthwise first if they're wider than an inch)
• 10-oz can consommé (that's the small, "normal" size)
• 1 cup frozen mixed vegetables
• 1 cup water
• 1/4 tsp. salt (or none, this is an old recipe when salt went into everything)
• 1 c. canned* tomatoes (I buy diced or crushed; if whole, crush or cut them in the can with a potato masher or knife)
• 1/8 tsp. black pepper
• 1 bay leaf, crumbled (I just break it into two or three pieces)

*(one cup of tomatoes isn't a lot, and we usually have the big 28-oz cans, so I usually use the whole big can anyway... and two consommé cans... and more vegetables :-)

Instructions

Heat butter in medium saucepan over medium heat. Add onions, stir 2 minutes. Add celery, stir one minute. Add remaining ingredients. Simmer until vegetables are tender, 10-15 minutes. Serves 3. Doubles readily.

Bonus! SUPER EASY ELEGANT SOUP FOR DINNER PARTIES

• Consomme, 1 can
• Tomato juice or V8 juice, 10 oz.
• Lemon, scrubbed clean in cold water then sliced ever-so-thinly

Empty can of consommé into a saucepan. Pour tomato juice or V8 juice into the empty consommé can, then add that to the saucepan. Heat on medium-high, but don't boil.

Ladle into soup bowls and float a lemon slice on each. Serves 4 as an appetizer.