Grade: Roasted Red Pepper Soup

• Flavor
• Texture
• Cooking ease
• Price
• Estimated healthiness
• Creativity of the recipe
• Completeness 

Out of 70 points.

I know, I know, this is late. Somehow it escaped me. I have plenty of time (75 minutes) to do analysis', so why not?

Flavor: 8/10. I had qualms with the abrasiveness/bitter flavor of the soup, but that likely could have been due to my own addition of peppers and not the ones I'd bought from TJ's. I think it was a bit one-sided, though, and needed something else. I would highly suggest this with a sandwich -- perhaps grilled cheese, or ham -- to let the flavors mix. I'm not usually big into adding meats to soups (I will, and I have no qualms with it, but I try to find healthy alternatives and then have my meat on the side), but I feel like a protein would be a fantastic addition. Even tofu.

Texture: 10/10 Brilliant! It's thick, it's creamy, it's smooth, and it feels like substance all at the same time. You feel like you can spoon that into your mouth all day no matter what.

Cooking ease: 6/10. Roasting peppers is a royal pain in the ass when you likely have other things going on in the kitchen, especially when there are so many to roast. Try to find very large bell peppers to negate the need to have so many if you need a large pot. If not, and if you have the time, then this isn't so bad -- but if you're like me and you also want to do cupcakes, icing and perhaps even a little cleaning up before eating the soup, then you're locked onto the stove (in my case, toaster oven) until it's done. And it's hot. I did burn myself. Stupid stove.

Price: 8.5/10 Fantastic, actually. Peppers, when they're the main course and not much else is needed, aren't so bad to pay for. Granted, TJ's ones aren't so cheap, but they're brilliantly flavored, so I was willing to pay the price for them (I have in the past). I don't want to be babied from my other, cheaper soups, though. In the long run, it's worth the price and it still makes the price-per-bowl very, very reasonable. (The way I see it, if I can be cheaper than Panera I've done something. I'm better than them anyway.)

Estimated healthiness: 9.5/10. The cream throws it off, but peppers are a great source of vitamin C and (I think) A. The different colors mean there are different phenols -- that basically means they're, as a whole, healthier. I'd recommend looking up the whole color-in-veggie thing; carotene is in carrots, for instance, and I've seen some good things from it.

Creativity: 9/10. I never considered roasting peppers and cooking them in a soup -- I always consider peppers for things like garnish, addition for flavor, or, if roasting, stuffing peppers. Hispanic dishes have stuffed poblanos all the time, and I think a lot of people think of them when they think of roasted pepper meals -- that, or putting roasted pepper on chicken. But as a main staple of the food? I don't think that comes up nearly as much.

Completeness: 8.5/10. I still say it needs a protein of some sort, to offset some of the negative flavors. That may just be me, but.. again, this is my grade, so what I say goes. And I say bring on the cheese! (Actually, some sharp cheese with some nuts of one's choosing would be fantastic. I shall do that next time! :D )

Total: 8.5/10, so a B. Not bad. Like I said, it needs work, and I'm very interested in doing this again for round two. We all know about round two, right?