Cooking with Roseanna and other FEMA Disasters

A couple of weeks ago my mom took to Goosberries for my birthday where the tomato basil soup is so good, it is actually delivered to you by singing cherubs on a pink cloud. Anyway, I thought it would be really cool to whip up a batch myself. There are few things as satisfying as making a big ol' batch of soup and squirreling it away for later when you are wearing scrunchy socks and are in a homemade eats kind of a mood. I had visions of myself pirouetting around my kitchen making soup while a soft acoustic guitar soundtrack accompanyed me in the background. Soup so good that eating it at my break area at work would transform the ordinary patio into a magical atrium of flying peacocks and Halleluiah choruses. So after a finding a recipe on the Internet, I bought enough tomatoes to almost weigh as much as God's address book, and got to chopping and simmering. My first clue should've been when it didn't turn that nice, rosy red color:

Is this supposed to look like burned transmission fluid?

I gamely stirred on, hoping for a pre Christmas miracle. I threw in some more salt and pepper, added some more tomatoes. But still my pathetic creation still came out tasting like a bland cross between heated up Play Doh and Gerber's pureed something. The worst part of the whole ordeal is the whompin' mess I made in my kitchen. If one were to walk in, it would be easy to assume that I have been laboring away on a four course meal for Martha Stewart. There are pans and cans and dirty cutting boards piled up self-importantly on my counter implying something much tastier than my lame-o soup. I just had to blog this because if you can't laugh at yourself, who can you laugh at? Especially if that laughing puts off cleaning up your dirty kitchen.