Recipe Schmecipe
This post is dedicated to those of you with a sense of a recipe’s “flavor profile.” I’m looking at you fantastic chefs out there: PJP, Jenny, Buds, Cindy…
I am not a natural cook. I can cook. I enjoy baking with the youngsters in my life. I can follow a recipe…
Except when I can’t/don’t.
Many of you know of the fiascos of my “substitutions” over the years.
If Buddie is home it’s a likelihood that once I start cooking he’ll appear to “help” because he knows eventually I’ll toss in some random spice or forget that I’m cooking because I’ve decided to work on something else.
My college roommate Jana Lu shuddered in horror when she saw my substitution for our college staple of macaroni & cheese, tuna, and peas. I was out of peas, but had a can of red kidney beans with taco seasoning.
That still seems fine to me.
Anywhoo, today is the monthly potluck at church. I wanted to make a huge batch of vegetarian eggy hash brown casserole. I was at the store last week and had a vague idea of the ingredients so I purchased a few things I thought were in the recipe.
Got up this morning, pulled up a few recipes I thought were good options, but quickly realized we didn’t have cream of anything soup. Buds suggested we run out to the store to grab some. (We have a store 3 minutes away which leads to this quick fix.) I didn’t want to run out to the store so looked up substitutions for cream of mushroom soup. (Buds suggested cream of mushroom rather than waiting for me to make up my own recipe. Something like cream of cinnamon soup pops into my mind as a good idea.)
There are plenty cream of x soup substitutions so I began to work on those. The first snag I hit was that we didn’t have Worcestershire sauce. So I looked up a substitute for Worcestershire sauce.
At this point Buds appeared to help because he could hear me muttering over my cauldron as I attempted to figure out how to make a substitution for a substitution for a recipe I was only using vaguely.
We got the Worcestershire sauce sub created to go into the cream of mushroom soup substitution.
Then I read the recipe again and realized I wanted to double it so we’d need to double the substituting we had just done.
Buds suggested a run to the store was now our quicker option.
So we ran to the store and purchased two cans of cream of mushroom soup.
After returning home I was reading through the recipe again to see how many eggs.
Most of you might want to go ahead and begin banging your head against a wall now.
I really didn’t mean for it to happen.
I had been reading recipes that were for cheesy hash brown casserole, but didn’t realize I had clicked away from recipes for cheesy EGG hash brown casserole.
With a quick glance to ensure Buds was busy on something else, I clicked over to cheesy eggy hash brown casseroles.
Huh. Look at that.
They don’t take cream of anything soup.
Huh.
Go figure.
“Ummm, Buds.”
I was then relegated to cracking two dozen eggs into a bowl where I was not allowed to touch anything else nor make anymore suggestions. Buds called in Yessa and they created a new, unique recipe using the ingredients and substitutions of substitutions.
Yes, the cream of mushroom soup went in.
Looks good to me:
If it turns out delicious, you may contact Buds for the recipe, oh wait, he doesn’t need recipes.
