Laura Gjovaag had this to say in a message I received yesterday…
My husband and I live in the Seattle area which has no Souplantation or Sweet Tomatoes restaurants. However, my husband was called to do the Jeopardy tryouts in Portland Oregon on March 29th. Lucky for us, you reminded us of the Creamy Tomato Soup the Thursday before, and we found a restaurant practically on our way in Vancouver Washington (that's the closest one to us!).
Well, we stopped on the way back and both tried the soup. It was excellent. I think I liked it more than my husband, but he doesn't particularly like tomatoes anyway, and he still liked the soup. I had two bowls, and totally broke my diet for the day (which is ok, I recover quickly from such disaster days).
Anyway, when we told them we were first-timers they gave us each a survey card, and we were sure to mention why we drove 200 miles to get to their restaurant and ask that the soup be served full-time.
I'll be blogging about the whole trip over on my blog in the next day or so, but I thought you'd like to know. You converted two more.
And you can read Laura's blog over the next day or so at this link. It's always well worth a click.
Not to talk this Creamy Tomato Soup thing to death — and yes, I know I passed that stage long ago — but I went in on Saturday for a couple of bowls and I also had a mission. Souplantation doesn't give out their recipes but they do have a book you can inspect that lists all the ingredients in each of their prepared items. I decided I'd find out what was in their Creamy Tomato Soup and then, if it didn't seem too complicated, I might try to figure out my own recipe for it.
I asked, every so politely and a nice lady hauled out the book, showed me the list…and right there, I thought, "Well, let's give up on that idea." There were about forty components and even if I'd been able to remember them all and jot them down, I'm not going to try to cook something with that many ingredients. Not only would it be too labor-intensive to gather them all but I'd have too many variables. If it was just tomato paste, carrots, celery, chicken stock and whipping cream, fine. I could experiment with the ratios of one item to another until I found a nice mix. But the Souplantation Creamy Tomato Soup involves all five of those plus about 30-35 others, some of which had chemical-sounding names.
End of brilliant notion. If and when the remodelling of my kitchen is completed — we're still hoping for this century — I may take a stab at conjuring up my own Creamy Tomato Soup. But it would be so much easier if the Souplantation people would just recognize that this blog speaks for all of America, yield to popular opinion and make the C.T.S. part of their regular lineup. And while they're at it, could they get us out of Iraq, please?