Cooking like a single woman #1 & Heirloom fajita soup

We all know how difficult it is to be single. The most difficult part? Cooking for one in a world filled with recipes for more than one.

I've struggled with this for so long. Most recipes I find serve 6. I'm not huge on leftovers so making a whole recipe just seems like a waste. Dividing the recipe by 6 often produces untenable results, namely that several measurements are usually some small that they're not measurable. Often these are the spices. Without the spices, the dish loses its flavor. So frustrating. That's my real inspiration for this new series of posts. I want to share with everyone ways to cook like a single woman.

On today's menu? Soup! I looooove soup. In the fall and winter there's nothing better than coming home to a slow cooker full of delicious soup and an apartment full of delicious smells. All you have to do is ladle some into a bowl. Perfect.Well, almost.

It's just plain silly to make a slow cooker soup with only one serving. Placing it in freezer bags often leads to larger quantities per bag than you would eat in one sitting. Some of the bag always goes bad before you get a chance to eat it.

Enter the muffin pan!! No, seriously.

Muffin pans are wonderful for soups too. After you ladle yourself a bowl of soup for dinner, ladle the soup into the muffin pan. You can fill each indent as much as you want--the soup won't expand like a muffin. Pop the pan in the freezer. Once the soup's frozen, place one soup muffin in each freezer bag. Voila! Instant single servings of soup. Just pull one out of the freezer and place it in the fridge the night before you want to eat it. It'll defrost perfectly. You can heat it up in the microwave or on the stove. I prefer the stove personally but either will do.

I have a bit of sad news. This post was supposed to include a recipe for an heirloom fajita soup that I came up with earlier today. There were supposed to be pictures of the soup. Pictures of gorgeous heirloom tomatoes and cute little peppers. Pictures of soup bubbling away in a crock pot. But technology had other ideas and the pictures seem to have disappeared from my camera. Sooo no pictures today. But below the jump is the recipe anyways!

Heirloom fajita soup

Ingredients:
- 2 big beautiful heirloom tomatoes (around 2 pounds worth)
-2 large bell peppers or a package of small sweet peppers
-3/4 of a rather large red onion
-4 1/4 cups of veggie stock
-2 tablespoons smoky paprika seasoning or other similarly favored seasoning
-1 tiny little can of tomato paste

I know those measurements are a bit weird but there they are.

Put the whole thing in a slow cooker, set it on low and let it simmer for 6-8 hours. Once the skin has basically fallen off the tomatoes pour the soup into a blender. If you have an immersion blender that would work well too. Pour the soup into your muffin tin. You should have a little over a bowl left. Enjoy your tomato soup guilt free! After all it's just veggie broth and fresh produce. :)