Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Bisque

This past weekend, I was graced with the presence of my Seester  (sister, for those not in the know).

And anytime Kim and I get together there is one key aspect we have to plan... FOOD!

If we're camping, food is still the key component.

At our parents' house... food must be planned.

At my house... well, you get the idea.

So with the cooler weather, I wanted to try my hand at a new soup. I had this particular soup at Cup of Hope, but thought I'd give it a try.

So, I present: Roasted Red Pepper and Tomato Bisque

It calls for 2 cans of Fire Roasted Tomatoes, which I had never seen before. As you can see on the label, these also include garlic - I'm already planning future uses for these tomatoes:

Another new discovery was the act of roasting my own pepper. I googled How to Roast a Bell Pepper and followed the directions. It worked like a charm... was icky, gooey, and messy... but easy :)

I even put Kim to work while I was on pepper patrol.

After the soup was ready, I pureed with my fabulous immersion blender. I will say, I was a little timid with it because I was worried about scratching my non-stick pot so we wound up with a chunkier version than I would have liked.

I made some fresh bread and topped it with cheese to go with our soup.

As you can see, it was a delicious meal:

If you are planning to try this recipe, I have a few suggestions (based on my personal preferences)

Puree the soup more thoroughly. The chunks of tomato and pepper were yummy... the pieces of celery were not. I would also recommend cutting up the celery into tinier pieces because of this.

The tomatoes come with garlic, so I would probably only add 2 cloves instead of 4 next time... unless you're worried about a vampire invasion.

The consistency was a lot thinner than what I would call a bisque so next time I might use 2 cups of chicken broth instead of 5... I didn't have chicken stock so maybe that was the problem??

Our next plan is to freeze the leftover soup. When Fall finally arrives, I'm gonna thaw the soup, add chicken, sausage and okra... and serve it over rice. The flavor will be a perfect base to build a gumbo around. I'll let you know how it turns out :)

(You can see how much fun we have, right?)