Sweet Red Pepper Soup

Soupereasy and I made this soup as part of a day-long project on cold soups.

We found that this soup needed quite a bit of tweaking to appeal to our taste.

1. we used at least double the amount of roasted red pepper in the pureed soup. We got a very mild red pepper flavor using only the 2/3 cup the recipe calls for.

2. the recipe called for 2 garlic cloves -- which seemed a bit overwhelming although my garlic also seemed a tad bitter so this may not be the fault of the recipe.

3. At the time of serving, the recipe has you add long thin strips of roasted red pepper -- which seemed odd -- and potentially messy eating -- for a soup meant to be either consumed with a spoon or sipped. So we diced the red pepper instead.

4. the recipe calls for a 1/4 cup of half and half to "smooth" the flavors. The author mentions that her husband prefers the soup without this and I tend to agree with him. But a small dollop of sour cream at the time of serving sounds good to me and would add visual appeal.

5. The recipe calls for no salt and you may find that you want some.

The recipe says to serve garnished with mint, savory or oregano (we used the latter).

I'd like to play with this recipe a bit -- maybe adding a bit of sauteed onion and garlic, rather than using raw chopped garlic. I'd also like to try this with a mixed herb combo of basil, thyme, and parsley.