The cooking at home (cah) experiment/challenge is going well. My first big cooking even was the vegetable stock I made yesterday; it was done after simmering in the slow cooker for nearly 5 hours (the recipe only called for four but it was five hours before I was ready to use it).

The veggies all looked pretty sad and I knew they had given their all to the water...now a beautiful stock:

I used about half of the stock to make a vegetable-tortellini soup that caught my eye over at williams-sonoma (recipe here). It really couldn't have been easier--sautee some vegetables, add the stock, cook the pasta, add the parsley and tomatoes and youre done. Dinner in about 10 minutes.

It was a really pretty soup--full of awesome veggies and plump cheese tortellini and was really quite good. The fresh vegetable stock did make a remarkable difference. I've usually stayed away from vegetable stock-based soups because I find them a little boring and bland but this was was delicious--and super chunky as well.

There were a few things I would change. The recipe calls for celery sauteed for just a few minutes (five or so) but it really had a pretty raw taste in the soup. Next time, I will either add the celery first and cook it a little longer or find another vegetable to replace that little crunch in the soup's texture. I'd also cut back on the parsley--it was a little much. I'm also thinking about adding garlic....because I like to add garlic to everything, don't you know. Lastly, it needed more salt; I'm so accustomed to working with canned stocks with so much added salt that I didn't compensate nearly enough for my low salt fresh stock.

That seems like a lot of negative stuff but there were some awesome positives: the tomatoes added to the soup at the last minute remained really fresh. It was a nice balance to the cooked vegetables and soft pasta. I also loved the parmesan cheese shaved on top but, really, who wouldn't?

All in all, a really nice summery soup.

Today for lunch, I was left with a few odds and ends from the soup and stock making day and, wouldn't you know it, they were just what I needed to throw together a quick tomato bruschetta for lunch.

This is one of those things for which I don't really have a steadfast recipe. Today's recipe was a little something like this:

2 tomatoes (about medium size), chopped into smallish pieces--almost a dice (I also squeeze the pulp out before but only because I dont really like it--if you do, leave it in!)
1 clove of garlic, minced Mine was absolutely humongous. If they were smaller, I probably would have added 2 or 3.
1/4 cup diced onion. I prefer red onion or scallions but didn't have any, so this is plain old yellow onion.
olive oil
balsamic vinegar
really good parmesan cheese

garlic bread for eating (toast some baguette slices and rub with a clove of garlic while they are warm)

I pretty much just mix everything together and add a splash of olive oil and a touch of vinegar. Oh--and salt and pepper too. Then I shave a bunch of cheese on top with a vegetable peeler (I like big chunks of the cheese--yum!). Spoon on top of the toasted bread and scarf down.