Thai soup Trials!

I was so excited about this soup! I am a huge Thai fan and love trying anything with the Thai flavors. My first attempt to try this soup was found to be unsuccessful, I realized I had NONE of the ingredients and went to the store (since when don't i have broth, coconut milk, or chicken on hand????) 1. I couldn't find the soup mix and the other ingredients were going to cost more then I wanted to spend on a single meal for just me so I called Carrie to see if we could make this one together.
Take two on Thai turned in to quite the ordeal! Combining what we had on hand the cost was totally doable! We planned to make it on a night we had dinner at her mom's because Mary really wanted to try this as well. I left Carrie with ALL the kids ( I know it is only 2 BUT, 3 toddlers is a handful) to make a "quick" run to Fred Meyers. I bought most of the stuff but still needed the soup mix, lemon grass, and the lime leaves. Well, after 3 more stores and $8 worth of lemongrass I still needed the soup mix so ran into a asian food mart. I didn't find the soup mix but I found twice the amount of lemongrass that was much fresher looking for $1. What is the deal with that? So, I made one final stop at another store and happened to be there just when the Taste of Thai rep was in the store. I found out that the soup mix is DISCONTINUED! Alas, I gave up my quest and headed back to the house.
Carrie and I made the soup and was impressed by how great of an aroma was lofting from the kitchen! The soup was ready and we both realized in our effort to make the soup and wrangler the kiddos we forgot to make rice. Lucky for us there was a bit left in the fridge from the night before so we carefully split the rice among the 6 bowls and served our soup.
It was mutually agreed upon that 1. we wanted a bit of a kick to the soup 2. between the girls all the parts of the soup were enjoyed, veggies for one, rice for another, and broth for the last 3. It is a soup that grows on you. We each added our own additions to kick it up a notch. I enjoyed adding thai curry sauce, Carrie like a bit of oyster sauce and soy sauce, and Mary added a spicy dried blend and sauce. I brought leftovers to my sis who added fish sauce and a "squeeze" of chili pepper blend.
I think the overall review was this would have been better with the soup mix and was a great base. We considered leaving out the chicken and serving it as a light appetizer to a Thai meal. We all felt that being a Thai recipe some added spice or flavor was a must but as we ate found it growing on us.
I'm not sure if we will rush out to make it again but will certainly keep the recipe in our file to pull out on the right occasion! How fun it is to try new things and find recipes to build on!