Remember grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup? When I was a kid, it was Campbell’s soup, made with water. The bread was Rainbow white, spread with margarine – the soft kind that came in a tub. The cheese was sliced American, the kind that came individually wrapped in plastic.
A meal overflowing with sodium and transfat, made of refined, highly processed food and chemicals.
I liked it. It’s safe to say it was one of my favorite meals.
Today’s grown-up version is a lot better of course, and very pretty, too, which I shouldn’t lay claim to, since I forgot to take a picture.
I started with frozen roasted tomatoes (the ones I put up last fall). These I put into a saucepan, added diced onion and minced garlic, along with dried Basil, and let it simmer. Salt and pepper to taste, then I used my stick blender for just a few pulses, to break up and evenly distribute the chunks of tomatoes, but not so much that it was completely smooth. Then I added some fresh, chopped spinach leaves to give it color and even more nutrition.
I made a salad of grated beets and carrots over mixed lettuce greens.
The sandwiches were whole wheat bread, spread with real butter. The cheese was a Petaluma cheddar-with-chives. After grilling, I cut each sandwich into four triangles and used them to anchor the salad.
The whole meal was around 400 calories, and loaded with fiber and nutrition. And darn near as easy to make as yesteryear’s fake food.
Marlene Dotterer 
I guess that makes me a food snob, too! I love to eat healthy and well, with lots of color and variety in the food. Your post made my mouth water!
Yum and Yum. We recently bought a Vitamix blender. Wow. I made sorbet last night in about a minute, could have been ice creme if I hadn’t added water.
Fud is amazing. Yum. Now I must make tomato soup.