A nice summer soup.

Mike is a huge fan of gazpacho, a tomato-based, chilled vegetable soup. We’ve tried a bunch of recipes and, as usual, have come up with our own variation. I just made a batch today; we’ll have it for dinner tonight.

Ingredients:

• 4 large ripe tomatoes
• 2 medium cucumber
• 1 medium pepper. Most people use green peppers, but I prefer yellow or orange, which have a milder flavor and don’t make me burp peppers for the next six hours. Today we had 1/2 of each leftover from another meal, so that’s what I used.
• 4 green onions. If you like a sharper onion flavor, use 1 small onion or 1 medium sweet onion.
• 2 cloves garlic
• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 1/3 cup red wine vinegar
• 1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar. Mike really likes b-vinegar.
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon ground cumin
• 1/8 teaspoon fresh ground pepper
• Tabasco (if desired) to taste. We don’t use this; we prefer a mello gazpacho.

Preparation Instructions:

1. Chop the first 4 ingredients. Put half of each in a blender or food processor (we use a blender) and the other half in a mixing bowl.
2. Add remaining ingredients to the blender or food processor.
3. Puree until very smooth. The mixture should have a pinkish color.
4. Add pureed mixture to mixing bowl with chopped ingredients. Mix well.
5. Cover and refrigerate for at least two hours but not more than 3 days.
6. Enjoy cold.

And if you see a gazpacho recipe that looks good to you but includes bread and water, just omit the bread and water. (The idea of including soaked bread in a soup really grosses me out.) As you’ll see, you don’t need bread to make the soup hearty and delicious.