**This recipe uses readily available pantry ingredients! Read on for a fast and delicious soup recipe**

Do you remember chain letters?  Years ago we used to get them for a variety of reasons…send a postcard to a bunch of people and receive hundreds of postcards from all over the world; send a dime to ten people and receive hundreds of dollars back; send on a message of good wishes to ten people and if don’t, you will meet with bad luck!  Of course, you always need to be careful that you are not engaging in a hoax.  In my teens and 20’s, you had to re-write the letters and use the postal service to send them on!  Naturally, when email came along, chain letters became easier to send and receive.  I’ve sent on a few simple ones in my day, and have rarely received back what was promised, but that was no surprise!  The chain is often broken.  The most interesting chain letter I received was from someone I knew very well and it proposed sending a book to the person on top of the list and you’d receive a large number of books back.  I did intend to do this to see what would happen, however, I never did send that book.  I bought one of my favourite books and I never got around to getting the proper packaging and going to the post office!  That book is still sitting on my shelf more than 20 years later!  I wonder if I would have received books in return?

It has been many years since I have sent any sort of chain letter, but in March I received an interesting looking chain letter from a very good friend.  The letter asked you to send a recipe to the person at the top of the list and then send the chain letter to ten other people.  In return you were supposed to receive 36 recipes.  Normally, I probably wouldn’t have gotten around to doing this, but at the time our life had just entered into a holding pattern with everything locked down and social distancing in place.  And, after all, I do write a food blog, so recipes are my thing!  I took a few minutes to send on one of my go-to recipes and waited to see what would happen.  I did get a recipe back within a few days and ended up receiving 7 or 8 recipes over about two weeks.  It wasn’t what was promised, but I thought that was a pretty good return.

I received an easy and delicious looking soup recipe that happened to be from another person I know through my work.  Since I love making soup, I tried it immediately and it was a big hit in our house!  As with all recipes, I tweak them a little to make them my own, so I adjusted the spices on this one.  The original recipe called for ⅛ tsp cayenne and ⅛ tsp black pepper, which I omitted.  It also called for crushed herbed tomatoes, but I used plain tomatoes because I find the canned herb tomatoes have a less than authentic taste.  I always use the best quality plain tomatoes I can find and add my own seasoning. Currently I’m loving the Mutti brand tomatoes.  They taste almost as good as your own fresh canned tomatoes!

After trying this recipe, I decided that it could also be served as a chilled soup in the warmer months, so I’ll give it another try in the summer too!  The recipe serves 12 but can easily be cut in half if you don’t want to do a large recipe.  Thanks so much to T.M. for this recipe.  And, thanks to D.L. for starting the chain letter!  Give this recipe a try and let me know what you think in the comments below…and, if you get a recipe chain letter, give it a go and see what you get!

Happy cooking friends!