Grocery Challenge 2012: Update 4

As I tweeted, last night we ate ramen noodles with langoustine for dinner, and I started a pot of venison/pork & bean soup. The condo smells INCREDIBLE...I hope the soup tonight smells as good as it tastes.

We are making this soup from a packet we found in our pantry, called "Friendship Soup". We have no idea what's in it, but it called for water, soup packet, canned tomatoes & ground meat, which we had all four! Of course the only ground meat I could find was a little stash of venison/pork combo but who cares? The interesting part was when we realized the packaging for the soup mix had a hole, so Bill poured the contents ever so slowly into a clear dish and we inspected it for bugs. I gawked over his shoulder, breathing in his ear like a kid in school. "Oh! is that a bug?.....What about that, is that a bug?" Let me tell you, trying to find bugs in a soup mix of beans, rice and cumin-like products was a memory. Needle in a haystack, anyone?

THE GOOD NEWS is we didn't find even a trace of one bug in our soup mixture and the smell has my mouth watering just thinking about it. I would post photos of both soups, but photos of food never look good unless they're professional. Ramen noodles look neon green & freakish, & I'm positive the venison/bean soup will resemble something unpleasant, so I'm going to skip the photos this time around.

This morning I found a great sounding recipe for S'mores Bars, which I plan on making tonight for dessert. I can only eat so many fruit-flavored ice pops...While digging through my baking cabinet for garbage granola bar ingredients I stumbled on a mass amount of 'mallows, grahams & chocolate yesterday. SCORE! It was tricky to find a recipe for S'mores Bars without eggs, but thank to Paula Deen I found one!!

Our friends are awesome at sending us websites we can use for recipes in our unique situation - keep them coming!!! Thanks for all of your support! In 19 days, when we move in, we can grocery shop. Meanwhile, thank goodness Hometown Fest is this weekend in Palatine. Inevitably, we will eat dinner there 3/5 nights. "What, all of the restaurants we can already walk to are serving the same food for inflated prices, and we eat it outside, on the street? YES. We need to go do that" What can I say? We love festivals :)