Oatmeal and Tomato Soup

TOMATO JUICE
Over dinner at the Bohol Bee Farm, my mom was raving about how good her tomato juice was and true to form began asking everyone to taste it. I wasn't sure if it was really that good or she was just trying to make herself feel better for that risky choice. But after my aunt shared with much gusto how her friends (all in their 60s) are now enjoying the benefits of a daily dose of tomato juice, I vowed to get a hold of a can the moment I land in Manila.

OATMEAL
My "love" affair with oatmeal started years ago in Chicago. It was always fashionable to attempt to lose weight when you get assigned abroad -- maybe to wow Manila when you get back. Unfortunately, for someone who can eat 5 cups of rice with 3 pieces of siomai (yes, that's Super Siomai Rice for the Ateneans), it remains a noble attempt everytime. One time in Costco during my weekly grocery-shopping, Quaker Oats stared at me and I got a big bucket to take home. And that was the start of my get thin plan. Or so I thought. Three days after making fancy oatmeal cover-ups ("oatmeal with milk, oatmeal with fruit, oatmeal with this and that..."), I placed my big bucket up the cupboard never to open it again.

DRINK
I love eating tomatoes. Drinking it shouldn't be so bad. Last night, I took a cup and filled half of it with tomato juice. Gulp. It really was like drinking pasta sauce without the meat. My mom may have lied.

SOUP
I cannot let my Tomato Juice go the way of my big bucket of oatmeal. So I googled http://allrecipes.com/ for anything which would use it as an ingredient. Tomato Pesto Soup! That would have been great except I don't have basil lying around. (Soupe au Pistou of Cafe Mediterranean is one of our favorites.) I scrolled down and saw Oatmeal and Tomato Soup. I didn't exactly follow the recipe but the result was good. Okay, fine, it's nothing fancy. I'm no Nigella Lawson.

Here's what I did.

(1) Chopped onion and garlic and threw it in a pan with margarine.
(2) Got a shaker of McCormick's Oregano and put it in the mix. (We have these fancy spices on the cupboard which we buy and use maybe once a year during the holidays when we'd open a cookbook and think, what if we cook something different today!)
(3) Got a cup of hot water and dissolved a chicken cube. Poured in the pan.
(4) Added 3 cups of tomato juice.
(5) I always liked creamy soups so I opened the ref and found an almost empty bottle of low-fat milk which I emptied. That would be around 3/4 of a cup. (Notice how everything now is either low-fat or lite. My dad thinks they just put that so they can raise prices. I sure hope Coke is telling the truth.)
(6) I microwaved a cup of oatmeal for 1 minute just to brown it a bit. I don't know why I had to do that but I put that in the mix as well.
(7) Oh, and I sprinkled salt and pepper to taste.

Eat up and Enjoy!