Cream of Tomato Soup: A Quick, Easy Summer Recipe

This is the single easiest recipe I know how to make. All you need are a couple small ingredients that are easy to keep in and around the home and a little know-how.
All you need is 8 ounces of cream cheese; if you want to slim down, don't go for the low fat. To make it low fat, they have to add all kinds of chemicals to get the texture and consistency right. Try using neufchatel instead; it's lower fat and has no funny stuff in it, plus it's often cheaper than cream cheese. You also need a can of diced tomatoes, fresh basil, salt, pepper, and milk. I used ones that are roasted with Italian herbs, but really, any canned diced tomatoes will do well. This time, my basil plant is really small (when I lived in my apartment, my basil plant was nearly four feet tall, but due to planting the plant at my house late, it's less than half the height it was at the apartment), so I wound up using dried mixed in with some of the fresh. For those of you who ask me why grow basil, let me tell you that fresh basil is really expensive and generally the first thing to go bad in the fridge. You save a lot of money simply by going outside and getting what you need off your plant; plus it helps your yard to smell fresher.
If you're like me, you hate doing large amounts of dishes. What I do is stick my ingredients in my pan and blend it using my immersion blender. This way, all that needs to be washed is the pan I cooked in and the bottom portion of the immersion blender. Finally, taste it, and alter the seasoning as necessary. Once it tastes right, heat it on medium until it's thick and heated through.
I usually serve this with Caprese sandwiches, but like I said, I didn't have enough basil to get away with that. However, we had oyster crackers, so Will went to town with that.