Foody Friday - Great Grandma's Tomato Soup

* Don't forget to enter my book giveaway!

For today's post I have decided to share a family recipe with you. My Great Grandmother's Tomato Soup recipe....*sniff*....excuse me while I go get a tissue. This is very emotional for me.

No, it's not that I'm emotional about my Gr. Grandmother...I barely remember her. I'm crying over this jar of soup. See this jar? It is my last jar of tomato soup.

I love this soup. It's thick and hearty and brings up precious memories of my childhood. Yip and Yap love this soup. They call it running soup. When they were 3 years old, they only ate it after I told them it would make them run faster. A little white lie to get my kids to eat healthy; I don't think God would mind.

See the date? It's almost two years old. I've been saving it for a special occasion...you know, for when the Queen comes to visit or something! 

 

We had a garden during the summer of 2008 and we had tomatoes!! Boy, did we have tomatoes. I juiced and sliced and canned tomatoes. I put up over 50 quarts of this tomato soup. Life was good!

But last year our tomatoes hardly did a thing. They were planted late because of the wet spring and the summer wasn't hot enough. By September, I had a garden full of green tomatoes. *Sniff* I didn't get any tomato soup made last year! Now, we are moving to Kansas and I won't have tomatoes this summer either. It has been a heartbreaking thought; no tomato soup.

However, I'm going to turn my depression to joy and share my recipe with you.

For all you gardeners, I hope you can use this recipe this year!  

Great Grandma's Tomato Soup

7-9 qts. of tomato juice

2 bunches of celery

6 onions

3 green peppers

10 or so large carrots (or a couple bags of baby carrots)

1 t black pepper

2 sticks of butter (not margarine)

1 1/2 c. sugar

1 1/2 c. flour

1/4 c. salt

Chop and puree all veggies and add to tomato juice. Boil for 30 minutes. Pull out a few cups of juice and allow to cool. Blend the remaining ingredients into the cool juice with a blender then return to hot soup. Cook 15 more minutes.

While soup is place canning jars and lids upside down in a few inches of boiling water to sterilize. Fill jars, one at a time, with hot soup. Wipe rims and fasten lid and ring. Sit on counter to allow it to self seal. Leave jars sit for 24 hours before moving. 

Note: I'm not sure if this method of canning is FDA approved but my family has been doing it this way for at least four generations and none of us have died yet from eating this soup!