The search for soup....

I try to plan meals for the week. I'm semi-successful at this. I plan the meals, make a list of everything I'll need and go to the grocery store and get it all. I know for many of you this is just standard practice but honestly it is a habit that has taken a while for me to develop. I used to be an everyday grocery kind of girl. I'd think up what I wanted to make for dinner on the drive home from work and swing by the store and get it. This has become more difficult with Noah.

Anyway, when planning meals for this week I was looking through a cookbook. It is a slow cooker book that I just grabbed at the checkout one day. I love the slow cooker....but of course it requires planning ahead because you can't grab meat at 4:30pm and slow cook it for 8-10 hours and expect your husband to think you're a homemaking genius.

And I see this great and easy recipe for garlic beef and potatoes. It is simple---you put the beef in the crock pot with cut up red potatoes and some garlic. You add dry garlic herb soup mix and beefy mushroom condensed soup. You slow cook it. Then you take all that out, add broccoli and let that simmer in the juices for a few minutes. And dinner is served!! This sounded easy and delicious. Plus the picture looked good.

Now this is a picture of a picture so it isn't the best but I promise that the picture looks great in real life. Don't you love a cookbook with pictures. I'm totally a judge a book by the cover or a recipe by the picture type of girl. Plus I htink it is helpful to know what in the world it is suppose to look like when you're finished.

So I write down the ingredients and head of to Super Target. I gather everything on the list....except that I can't find the condensed beefy mushroom soup. I ask the Target guy to help me. He can't find it either. He asks me if I think Beef Consumme is the same thing. I don't know. Is beefy mushroom brothy? Or is it creamy? It is kind of hard to substitute when you don't even know what exactly you're trying to replace. So, I leave Target with everything I need except the soup.

Today I stopped by Tom Thumb to grab two items. One of them being beefy mushroom soup. However, no beefy mushroom at the Thumb.

When I got home I did a little internet search. I found out the condensed beefy mushroom soup is made by Campbell's as I suspected. They sell it on Amazon. You can order 12 cans and they can ship it to you next day.....for a price. All I need is one can so I'm not thinking this is the way to go.

After Noah goes to bed, I head out to Walmart. Surely they have it. Nope!

Does Central Market? No.

Albertson's? No beefy mushroom in site.

I'm starting to think that we're just going to have to substitute---plain beef broth? golden mushroom soup? cream of mushroom? a mixture of those? Oh dear!!

On last stop at a Kroger. Did I mention it is 9pm now?? Run in and what do I find?

Woohoo!! I did a little happy dance in the aisle. And of course since I went to 5 places to find it....I went ahead and bought 2.

Now I'm off to prep the veggies so I can just dump everything in the slow cooker tomorrow morning. I'll let you know how it turns out. Hopefully it will be the best thing ever in order to justify the 5 store journey I've been on!!