Substitution

Substitution has oh so many meanings.  When someone on a sports team is injured or just plain worn out the coach yells, "Substitution for," and then names the player he is pulling out.  This allows the team to continue to play at their best.

When making a recipe sometimes there may be reasons that you need to substitute a different ingredient.  For example, if the recipe calls for white onions or purple onions it is necessary for me to substitute yellow onions.  Yellow is a sweeter onion and is not as powerful as the other onions.  I have digestive issues that make eating any onion other than yellow painful for hours afterwards.

I love to make fruit crisps.  Sometimes I make apple, in season I love to make peach, and berry crisps are berry berry yummy!  I published my recipe which I've developed over the last 30 years of my life.  It is quite a simple recipe.  If you are interested you can find it at driftinganchorranch.blogspot.com

On Monday I found that I did not have time to go to the store to purchase two missing ingredients, vanilla and butter to make my fruit crisp.  I had butter but not nearly enough.  I was "presenting" at a group that night.  So, I left out the vanilla, and put the not quite enough butter in.  The fruit crisp was ok...but not as delicious as usual.  I still used lemon juice in the apples to keep them from browning too fast and give it a nudge of a tart taste.  The problem was that without the vanilla to balance that tart taste the crisp was on the edge of sour....not a taste that is positive in the realm of fruit desserts.  To make things worse I put less sugar in than the recipe calls for.  It makes the recipe slightly healthier but again accentuated the tart taste.

What things in life cause us to make substitutions?  Substitutions that sometimes turn out better than the original, but often are just a bit too sour?  I would LOVE to hear comments from anyone about things that they have substituted that have been great, or things that have not turned out very well, (like my fruit crisp).