I shouldn't have ... but I did

I knew I shouldn't have done this, but I did it anyway. Even when I started on this recipe this afternoon, I knew I shouldn't and still I went ahead and did it. What did I do? I consulted Cooking Light for a new soup recipe that I had high expectations for. This recipe is exactly what turns me off of Cooking Light and how I get so annoyed when they slap a few mismatched ingredients together along with a pretty picture and call it a recipe. I knew balsamic, beef broth and soy sauce sounded iffy but still I got lured by the pretty bowl of soup with the pumpkin focaccia sitting so perfectly next to it. I absolutely love Tomato-Basil Soup especially the kind with way too much cream in it so I set out this afternoon to attempt one and failed miserably. What I attempted was Creamy Tomato-Balsamic Soup from the Oct. '05 issue. If you read the reviews you would think this was heaven in a bowl. I don't get it because it tatsted like a spoonful of vinegar with every bite not tomato soup! I tried a billion things to save the soup a couple handfuls of chopped basil ... did this save my soup? Nope. More cream? Nope. Can I turn it into pasta sauce? Nope. Can this soup be saved? I don't think so, but we choked some of it down along with a big salad and a lot of garlic bread! It's possible my balsamic was too high a quality for what they were going for and the flavor was maybe a bit overpowering. I'm posting because this one was on my list to try this month and even though it was a failure maybe it will inspire another tomato-basil soup lover to experiment.

By the way, the best tomato-basil soup I've ever had is at Main Street Bakery in Grapevine, TX. Yes, Texans ... it's even better than La Madeleine's.