Making plain soup fancy on a budget

This is a pretty good, but pretty plain, soup I bought for 3.29

I had everything but what's on the cutting board and the wine in my cabinet. I bought $11 worth of stuff to improve the store bought soup.

Diced up the white parts of the green onions. Just sliced them then went through them twice with my knife. A little texture is good.

2 tablespoons of oil then the tomatoes in on medium heat. I'm trying to sear the skins here.

They kept popping and splashing in the oil so I covered them.

Little bit of a sear. There's only so much you can do but the color is nice.

Look how plain the store bought soup looks. It tastes good, but it's just this bland grey. I'm gonna fix that.

Seared and rolled, I added a half cup of cheap wine ($3 a bottle) plus salt and pepper. Turned the heat down to low and kept cooking.

Sliced my washed mushrooms.

A tablespoon of oil, the white part of the green onions, and 3T minced garlic. Medium low heat.

You should be able to crush the tomatoes with a spoon. Keep on simmering.

I added about 1 teaspoon each of oregano, red pepper flakes, and rosemary.

The mushrooms are going to shrink as they cook. Stir both them and the soup regularly as they cook.

Sliced the green parts of the green onions and sliced my basil in a chiffonade. Basically just lay all the basil leaves inside the largest one and then roll it like a cigar. Once you have a tight tube of herbs you slice it as thinly as you can.

Added basil and 1 tsp balsamic vinegar to my tomatoes. It needed a little sweetness but I didn't want to add just sugar, although that's fine if you want to.

Whole set-up with a fun Alaskan knife/cutting board at the top left. I haven't used it for much yet, but it is exceptional at mincing herbs.

The mushrooms, green onions, and garlic after 20 minutes. I cranked in a bunch of black pepper and turned the heat off right after this.

The tomato/wine/herb mix is so thick that you can drag a bare spot on the pan.

Added the tomato and mushroom mix into the soup. Now we have some texture.

Grilling a cheese. Pepper Jack to be specific.

Final product topped with the green parts of the green onion and served with the grilled cheese.