Emily! I bring unexpected news: I made shit up and it was good.

A cucumber in my fridge was looking really sad the other day, and I had these other ingredients available (through no actual planning of my own). It was fabulously creamy and delicious, so I thought I’d write up the recipe for you. I’m going to write exactly what I did, although I’m pretty sure that cutting down time by using fresh ingredients where I used marinated would work too. I hope you won’t mind if there’s no photo to illustrate it… yet.

I happened to have had, that day:
* a finely sliced onion in a bowl, marinating since the day before in a red wine vinegar + olive oil vinaigrette (the remainder of a sauce I made for greens)
* a pan of oven-roasted tomatoes (cut your tomatoes in two, put them in an oven dish cut side up, add salt, pepper & olive oil, roast for 45mn at about 180°C) (I had roasted them to eat as a side dish, not become an ingredient, but what the hell)
* an old decrepit cucumber
* some frozen garlic cloves (I bought a pound bag of them in an Asian grocery store a while back, SO HANDY)
* a jar of preserved red bell pepper (in brine)
* a few fresh leaves of basil

After cutting the tomatoes up in quarters, peeling and dicing the cucumber, and detailing the red bell pepper strips into smaller chunks, I put all of this together in the blender and hit WHIZZ.

I was expecting to have to adjust the taste (vinegar, oil, salt and pepper were all at complete guesstimate levels) and was a little scared on the acidity front, but the bell pepper – I had slightly more bell pepper than tomato, which is really unusual for me – made it really sweet, which balanced the vinegar perfectly. It was *amazing*, to me anyway, especially for something I just threw together because I had no clue what to cook.

I know it’s winter where you are, Emily, and I hope you won’t begrudge me my extra-summery recipe, but it’s been so hot here lately that a cold soup was exactly what I needed.