Chapter 2: Grilled Cheese & Tomato Soup with Corn Chips
When I think of grilled cheese and tomato soup, I immediately think of the rain.
I have this blurry memory of coming home from the doctor with my mom on a rainy late-afternoon, and eventually sitting down to grilled cheese and tomato soup. My mom seemed frustrated upon returning home, although I’m not sure about what. The memory then flashes to this book I remember being obsessed with when I was first learning how to read.
It was called Umbrella by Taro Yashima, about a little girl named Momo who gets an umbrella and rain boots, and then impatiently waits for it to rain so she can wear them. I remember developing an early love of rain because of this book. Recently when I found the book again and re-read it I remembered that the little girl’s story was set in New York!
Illustration by Taro Yashima from Umbrella (Hear the story read aloud here)
As a little girl I’d have been delighted to have known that a decade or so later I’d be able to enjoy the rain in New York just like Momo. After all my dad was always talking about New York, it seemed like the place to be.
Fast forward to today and, while I don’t enjoy cars sending sidewalk waves of water my way on a rainy morning walk commuting to the farm, I still love the rain.
I love it at night, sparkling against the backdrop of street lights.
I love it on my fire escape so I don’t have to water my plants.
I like it in the winter when it creates sheets of ice on the ground and insists everyone slow down.
Most importantly I love the rain when I have a bowl of tomato soup and something cheesy and crunchy to dip into it. Where I can sit on something comfy in a dark, gloomy room and think about the weight of life without interruption.
Grilled cheese and tomato soup with UTZ's chips could be a school day lunch or dinner. Early in my childhood it was definitely kraft cheese, blue ribbon bread, country crock spread, and campbell’s tomato soup, but into my teens my mom started making the soup from scratch and we started using grated cheese with real butter. The bread wouldn’t change much until I was an adult. Either way, high-quality or not, grilled cheese and tomato soup with salty chips is still in my top five favorite meal combos.
As much as I love rain, this meal always brings some much wanted warmth and sunshine to whatever environment I’m taking a break from working or studying in. Hopefully, if you try it out, it brings that for you too.
This meal is broken into three recipe parts:
Below is a visual only recipe for the grilled cheese with Saraghina bakery bread (swoon), yummy butter, and, in the tradition of my childhood, a questionably sourced cheese.
The tomato soup is inspired by one of my mom’s non-recipe recipes, which I document from my memories of watching her make it.
The chips are a successful experiment my siblings and mom created when we failed to make good pupusas.
