Sweet-and-Sour Beet, Cabbage, and Tomato Soup

So delicious! No celriac in my local store, but other than that my only changes (the first is an important one) were to use chicken broth in place of water and to saute the onion in a tsp. of oil before adding it to the soup. Oh, and I did roast the beets when I was cooking the Thanksgiving turkey a few days ago, then tonight cubed and put them in the soup half way through the cooking time since they were fairly soft already. Lemon & peel are essential. I served this with some mashed potato-chive pancakes, applesauce, and a few vegetarian breakfast sausages, and we were all very happy.

I was afraid that this didn't have enough spice in the recipe, so I added 2 bay leaves and put in 10 peppercorns instead of the ground pepper. I used celery and I subbed the sour cream with no-fat Greek yogurt, as did the first reviewer. I liked that it had cabbage in it and it's a very colorful soup. Don't skip the grated lemon rind because it really gives the soup a zip. I couldn't taste the lemon juice at all, and I don't understand what one Tbls. of brown sugar is supposed to do in this big a pot of soup. I also used my homemade vegetable stock instead of water. Served with a green salad and my homemade seeded rye. I liked it, but it needs something else to get 4 stars.

3 star as written. 5 star with mods. I modified this a bit. I added a dash of Mrs. Dash Caribbean Citrus, a dash of Bon Appetit in place of salt. It needed that spice to bring out the flavors. Greek no fat plain yogurt used in place of sour cream.