I'm sure it's the same thing.

When I was first married I didn't really know how to cook.  I overcame this by spending hours learning recipes and how to do stuff, like cut onions, bake chicken, and other culinary basics.

One of my biggest obstacles was understanding that ingredients were different from each other.  By this I mean I was always switching "evaporated milk" for "sweetened condensed milk" or "green onions" for "green peppers".

When Lance would point out I couldn't make such substitutions, I would always say, "I'm sure it's the same thing" and I was always shocked when I learned they were NOT the same thing.

Well today I decided I wanted to make black bean soup.  We've never found a great and easy recipe for this dish, but I was determined today to try again.  I found a recipe on the back of my black bean can and figured I'd give it a whirl.

Needless to say, on the fly, I was missing some of the ingredients.  I fell back to my default and began switching ingredients, because I'm sure they're the same thing.

Saute in a frying pan -- nah, I want to cook this in the crock pot.

Green pepper - no, but I have crushed red pepper flakes - it's gotta be close enough, right?

Thyme - nope, but cumin is always good with black beans, so this is likely what they meant to say.

Garlic Salt - I do have this, but fresh, crushed garlic is better, and more is better.  I tripled the amount needed.

Cider Vinegar - never have this one, but I do know the acid is what is important, so lime juice will do the trick instead.

I also found a "Black Bean Ole" spice in my cupboard ... and threw in a tablespoon (or two, who keeps track?) of that too just for good measure.

It's cooking right now.  It smells fantastic and in a few hours we'll know if it tastes good too.  If it does taste great, the good news is all my substitutions will have been worth it, but the bad new is I'm not sure if I can remember what those substitutions were.

P.S.  Don't tell Lance ... he never approves of estimating ingredients or substituting stuff that I'm sure is the same thing.  If it's a super hit, I'll just pass it off as some recipe I finally found on Google. *wink, wink*