Friday Night Fun

Last night, I got a leaking filling replaced at 6 PM. Not exactly a great way to spend the night off. But, my new dentist is cool and will see me at 6 PM on a Friday, so I went. The receptionist is an amazing linguist who wheels and deals in Mandarin, Spanish, and English. The dentist is into high tech gadgets and numbing with a lidocaine swab before giving the novocaine injection (what a brilliant idea, why hasn't any other dentist done this for me?). When I wanted to tune out from the dental work I listened to the medley of Mandarin, Spanish, and English. He even showed me his progress along the way, including the cavity that had formed under the filling (tooth decay is black! I thought it was just those cartoons from childhood that portrayed it as black evil germs). Overall, not a bad experience, which is all you can ask for from the dentist.

My instructions were not to chew on that side of my mouth for 24 hours.

So, E and I had a few glasses of wine and threw ingredients from the pantry and fridge into a pot to make a non-chewable soup. Fortune was on the side of cooking by instinct, yet again. I'm making this the next time we have company over, as it was AMAZING. Sure, if I was planning it, I'd make it from scratch, but now that I know how well it turned out from the can, I'll save the effort.

STUPID-EASY "NO-CHEW" TOMATO BISQUE
1 can tomato soup
1 cup water
1/2 pint half-and-half cream
8 oz. tomato paste
2 tsp. lemon juice
seasonings to taste (we tossed in a bit of black pepper, white pepper, cayenne, "italian seasoning", dried minced onions, and garlic powder)

Combine all the ingredients in a sauce pot and cook on low heat, stirring and smashing the tomato paste against the side of the pan until the color is even. Allow to simmer until it reaches the thickness you desire. Remove from heat, stir and serve warm (seems like it would work cold as well, although it might need different less spicy seasonings for it to be good chilled).