From under the tomato arch
Dear friends,
It's been a strong couple of months around here: I sold six stories in June and July, and I wrote and revised several more new ones. If you're not active in publishing, you might wonder: is that good? Yes. Yes, it is very good. Hooray, go team.
I've already said this on Bluesky, but I think one of the ways in which publishing suits me is that if you put the time and energy and effort in to send your work out, something wonderful might happen to you any day. Yesterday I sold a story! I get to work with an editor I like! Wonderful! Sure, bad things might happen at any time as well, but to me, a rejection is just status quo. That magazine (or anthology) was already not publishing your story; you're no worse off than you started. And honestly, bad things come to you without you working for them. Good things...often can use a little help.
One of my longest-term friends and I had a disagreement about life when we were in our late teens. "You can't be happy most of the time, but you can be content, so that's what I'm going to aim for," he claimed, and I looked at him like he'd lost his mind. I can't be content most of the time, and I'm not trying, but gosh, I can be happy. Even when bad things come with the good, I am really good at being happy. I hope my friend is really good at content. There's nothing wrong with being one or the other. But me, I'll take happy any day--and many days I do.
One of those six stories is already out: Conjured From the Rubble appeared in Haven Spec. It's got the pitfalls of class mobility, it's got natural disasters, and oh yeah, it's got wizards. Check it out.
In other publishing from the last month, I have an essay out in Uncanny! Book Clubs With My Imaginary Friends is about the joy of reading things in common with people--even if those people are fictional. I've already heard that it's gotten several complete strangers reading some of my favorites that are discussed in it, so that feels pretty great, honestly.
We've upgraded our gardening this year--and by "we" I mean "both people in the house who are not me, I did none of the work." But the work I am doing is dealing with the results. The warm, rainy summer we're having has sent the tomatoes into the stratosphere. I literally have had to duck through an arch of tomatoes to harvest them. So I wanted something with a different taste than the other tomato soups I make and love--something warm and rich rather than sharp and bright or creamy and smooth, just for variety as we use all of these. I like a cream of tomato soup as well as the next person--let's be honest, probably more than the next person, I really like tomatoes--but this is another thing completely, and one I like. I hope you do too. Oh, and by coincidence, it's both vegan and gluten-free.
Have a great August.
Best,
Marissa
Roasted Tomato Miso Soup
2 pounds of medium-sized tomatoes, halved, cored if the core looks woody
Put those on a baking tray. Drizzle with olive oil (if you're like me, use a little more than you think you'll need) and sprinkle with salt.
Now. You can either take 2-4 cloves of garlic, still in their skins, and put them in a little foil packet with a drizzle of olive oil, to roast with the tomatoes. Or you can take the whole head of garlic, and when you're done you'll have extra roasted garlic to do wonderful things with. I know which one I picked.
Put in a 400 F oven for an hour. The tomatoes will blister and get caramelized. You want that.
Will this work with cherry tomatoes? I think probably, but you'll want to roast them considerably less than an hour. Half an hour maybe? Keep an eye on them.
If you're lucky enough to have an immersion blender/stick blender--I am, and I love it--go ahead and just scoop the tomatoes into the pot you're going to make soup in. Pull out and peel 2-4 roasted garlic cloves when they're cool enough to handle, and pop those in as well. Puree those at any time up until the moment of eating them. If you have a regular blender or food processor, put the tomatoes and roasted garlic in that and puree, then dump the result in your medium-sized saucepan.
Add two cups of water, around a tablespoon of miso paste, around a tablespoon of maple syrup, and roasted pepper flakes to taste. ("Zero" is an acceptable taste and don't let anyone tell you differently.) Let it simmer for half an hour for the flavors to go through.
This is a very flexible soup. You can pop those wee pasta rings in it, or maybe some nice cooked chickpeas, or assorted veg if you like those. You can chop part of an avocado in at the last minute. You can just do what I did and eat it plain with a nice piece of toast. Two pounds of tomatoes makes about two meal-servings of soup, more if you're doing it as a side dish, and this recipe scales--you can do it with four pounds of tomatoes, or eight. Because there's no cream in it, it should freeze and thaw without separating.
I thought of this because a friend of mine got cherry tomato-miso-honey gelato in Italy, and I thought, you know what.... So I bet honey would be fine in it too, but 1) I am from the north, we are a mapley bunch and 2) I like the darker flavors, so I'd want a buckwheat honey or something if possible--but you don't have to want that--and 3) this way it's fully vegan if you're serving it to friends who need that. Or if you yourself need that.