Gazpacho with a Special Guest Chef

Do I have to admit that I have never had gazpacho until yesterday?  I had a guest blogger talk me into   it...The Tipsy Gourmet.  She is a food blogger like me who enjoys good food, good friends and lots of laughs!  

Whenever we get together, fun things happen.  I was happy to have her and her son Wes over to cook, play with the boys and enjoy a cup of coffee.  

I had a ton of tomatoes on the counter, so she suggested gazpacho.  I admit, I was like Um, yeah, that sounds...um...yeah.  Once she looked up my favorite celebrity chef's recipe:  Ina Garten (The Barefoot Contessa), how could I say no?  Here is where you can find her recipe:  Ina Garten's Gazpacho Recipe. 

All of the ingredients were in the house, except for tomato juice.

We decided to just make it.  I put a 28 ounce can of whole tomatoes into the food processor.

And then put it through a strainer to take out the seeds.

Billie started by cutting up a giant cucumber I picked out of the garden.  She took all the seeds out of it, cut it into chunks, and put it into the food processor. 

Fellow bloggers hard at work.  We make a pretty good team!

The recipe called for red peppers, but my husband bought this ridiculously large bag of mini peppers, which were mostly orange...so there you go.  Use what you have in your house!  There is no need to go out and buy red peppers if you have orange or green in your fridge. I cut and seeded these.  Billie gave them a large chop and put them in the food processor.

Next the beautiful Roma tomatoes.  I love to grow these.   You can do so much with them!  And they are delicious!

Here is The Tipsy Gourmet ready to take a few pictures for her own blog.  

Next came the red onion.  The recipe called for a whole red onion, but we did half.  Later we decided 1/4 cup would have been plenty.

Four cloves of garlic, minced.

Billie added all the processed veggies to a large bowl, while I got the white wine vinegar, olive oil and tomato juice ready.  She also added salt and pepper.

Here is our bowl of gazpacho.  I couldn't wait to taste it!  It smelled delicious in my kitchen!

Here is one of our photographers, Wes (Billie's son), taking a shot of us for her blog.

Wishing for crusty bread doesn't make it appear.  We settled for a regular grilled cheese.  It did the job!  The boys had a sandwich too.

Billie got the kids plates ready while I started on another project.

Nicholas, food critic and photographer for Janis Cooks.

Marcus (in the blue shirt), official taste tester.  Wes, official taste tester and photographer for The Tipsy Gourmet.  

Here is the project I was working on while she got the boys sandwiches on plates.  I know I made a Caprese tart before on this blog, but this time I used Roma tomatoes.  It was a lot easier to clean them, much quicker to make, and oh so delicious!

Hope you enjoyed our collaboration.  I loved cooking with Billie and blogging this.  Maybe we can do this every month!