Foody Friday - Running Soup (the small batch)

This is my VERY favorite soup to make!! Mostly because this was the only tomato soup I ever ate growing up and because my mom and grandma would can huge batches of it every summer. Wonderful memories!! When I finally was able to grow my own tomatoes, about 5 years ago, I canned TONS of this soup!! The boys were only 2 or 3 years old at the time and the only way I could get them to eat it was tell them eating this soup would make them run faster. HA HA!! Now they are in love with it too! 

Due to a bad tomato crop and moving to Kansas it has been WAY TOO LONG since I've made this soup! I tried to make it once using canned tomato juice from the store but it just didn't taste right. Tomato juice straight from your garden tomatoes is the only way to make this soup! (In my humble opinion anyway!)This week I finally had enough tomatoes from our garden to make soup. 

The problem is I've always made this soup in huge batches to can....but I only had 1 1/2 quarts of juice from my small bunch of tomatoes. So I did the math, tweaked things a bit and made up a small batch....aaahhhh, music to my mouth it was!! 

Great Grandma Brown's Tomato Soup

AKA - Running Soup

1 1/2 qt. tomato juice 

(from store or garden, that's up to you)

1/2 green pepper

1 small onion

1/2 c. chopped celery

1/2 c. chopped carrots

2 T butter (not margarine)

1/4 c. sugar, scant

1/4 c. flour

1 1/2 t. salt

1/4 t. pepper

Chop and puree all vegetables in blender; add to juice and boil for 30 minutes.

Pull out a cup of juice and allow to cool. Blend in remaining ingredients to cooled juice, then add to to hot soup. Taste and adjust salt/pepper/sugar as needed. Cook 15 more minutes and serve warm with toasted cheese sandwiches! YUM!!