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Opening Arguments

Soup's on

I haven't gone all "wah-wah fuddy-duddy why can't the world stand still?" on you in a couple of weeks, so if I may:

If your lunch still consists of a bowl of Campbell's tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich, chances are you grew up using a typewriter.

Generations of Americans have moved on from Campbell's condensed chicken noodle and tomato soups in search of heartier varieties with more exotic flavors. Now, the world's largest soup company is racing to do the same.

Yeah, well, I did grow up using a typewriter, but I like my laptop and tablet just fine, now, and the 0ld man can even text on his smartphone. And I don't have a grilled cheese and tomato soup in my lunch, but it's something I fix with pleasure occasionally because it takes me back to long-ago school days when I'd go home for lunch and my mother would fix that pair for me. But these days, I tend to mix the cheeses in my grilled cheese and include things like tomato slices and dill pickle chips.

(Whine altert!) Isn't there one single thing we can just leave alone? The new soups, we are told, have some surprising ingredients for those used to a plain bowl of chicken soup -- like tomatillos, coconut milk and shitake mushrooms -- and they also don't "look like the big, gelatinous chunks that came in the steel cans that built Campbell into an iconic brand. These soups come in plastic pouches that are easy to open and heat up in a microwave in less than three minutes."

Actually, I kind of like the nuke-and-eat soups instead of having to mix the glop with water and stir it on the stove. And I don't mind something different on occasion -- the thick-and-chunky varieties are really nice on a cold day. But please don't take away my old standards, like (just a little) chicken (and a whole lot of) noodle soup loaded up with salt that you can make even saltier by crumbling crackers into it. Mmmm, good!

All this upheaval is being done, of course, to please the Millenials, who are becoming even more annoying as a group than we Baby Boomers were. They seem to be fond of flavors such as Green Thai Curry and Creamy Chipotle. I guess Campbell is even toying with -- dear God! -- a kimchee soup. That's just wrong.

Comments

Bob G.
Wed, 09/12/2012 - 2:35pm

Leo:

My God man, we have THAT in common (tomato soup and grilled cheese)...which I STILL enjoy from time to time.

The other favorite from years back was the Lipton's chicken noodle soup (that had to be BOILED to mix properly), and it was always TOO DANG HOT.

Hell, I'd share a lunch of EITHER with you ANY day...

As to the creamy chipolte?

Well, I "might" use it for a varnish remover...

 

:)

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