So what did I substitute? I decided to just go with pre-cooked bacon. I have bacon fat on hand in the refrigerator, so I added that to the pot for flavor, but skipped the actual step of cooking the bacon. I probably used about two tablespoons worth of fat, but that's totally a guess. Secondly, we don't really love celery, and I wasn't in the mood to buy a whole bunch of celery to use for one recipe and then rot in the refrigerator, so I just used a generous handful of pre-shredded carrot. There are carrots in cheese soup all the time, so I wasn't worried at all.
Next came the beer. We don't drink beer at our house because it smells gross and tastes worse, which becomes a probably for recipes that require it. I was determined to only buy a single can, so as to waste as little as possible. That narrowed my choices significantly at the store, and I ended up choosing Fosters, which is definitely not a dark ale. Maybe that was a better choice, since we aren't big fans of the flavor at all. Now the for cheese. I was going to get a white cheddar, but it's so expensive and our store didn't have the right size block. I ended up with an extra sharp block of regular cheddar instead. Lastly, I don't keep Tabasco sauce on hand, so I used a different hot sauce in its place.
And now you can see why we renamed the soup. Even with it's mid-America refashioning, this soup was thick and yummy. We gobbled it down, and have been enjoying the leftovers ever since. It was the perfect way to celebrate a short night and a successful reservation day, even if I did mess up the very first and most important reservation, right out of the gate.đŸ˜…
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