Cthulhu Soup

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

A recipe:
1 can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup (the kind without Disney characters on the label)
1/2 can of water (they tell you to use a whole can. Don’t believe them. Dilutes the flavor)
4-5 drops green liquid food coloring, brand unimportant; I used McCormick’s, back in the day
5-8 pulverized Saltine crackers, to taste; add crackers one or two at a time until the desired texture is achieved

Add all ingredients to a small saucepan and heat until hot. Alternatively, add all ingredients to a microwave safe bowl and put a paper towel on top, then heat in the microwave until hot.

Stir and serve.
Upon reading this, you might well think, “What were you thinking? Your food is disgusting, a greeny-yellow pulpy semiliquid mess with little yellow wormlike noodles oozing in and out of it! What possessed you to ruin a perfectly good bowl of soup?”

And therein hangs the tale.

One day, I was maybe twelve, I was hungry, and I heated up a can of soup. Yeah, big news, right?

Little did I know that this would herald the beginning of the Soup Wars.

I didn’t MIND making hot meals for myself and my sister. Problem is, sibling rivalry and attendant meanness meant that she’d WEAPONIZE it. My little sister wasn’t a terribly mean child, certainly no worse than anyone else’s. And I could certainly be no prize myself. But one day, she found a lever of power, and like many, she couldn’t resist yanking it until it broke off in her hand.

One day, I was heating up a can of soup. She smelled it, walked in, and said, “I want some soup.”

“Fine,” I said. “Get a bowl, and you can have this soup.”

“No,” she said. “I only want half that soup.”

“”Tough,” I said. “I want a whole can. You can have this soup, and I’ll make another can.”

“No,” she said. “I only want half a can. You can have the other half.”

“But I want a whole can,” I said. “You get a whole can, or nothing.”

“MAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!” she screamed.

“Share the soup with your sister!” came the cry from the other end of the house.

And she smirked at me.

And from that day onward, a gleeful pattern emerged: when the smell of soup was smelled, she would come running in and demand half of it. I could have have a can, or a can and a half, and I could just live with it! Either that, or no soup for you, Charlie.

And that irritated me. A can and a half was more soup than I wanted, and it irritated me even further that she’d make a point of coming in and demanding her tribute when I knew damn good and well she wasn’t hungry, she was just doing it to nettle me.

Durnit.

And this went on for a bit… until an idea occurred. One day, I opened a can of soup, dumped it in the pan, added the water, and then pulverized some crackers into it as it heated… and then hunted around for the food coloring, fished out the green, and added enough to give it a proper neon-swamp-water look.

The soup heated. The chicken aroma swelled and spread. And the sister came stomping in to demand her cut. And I sweetly and obediently dished her up half the pan.

The look on her face was pure satisfaction. To me, that is. She was horrified. “What in ghod’s name is THIS?”

“Your snack,” I snickered. “Eat up before it gets cold.”

“I’m not eating THIS!”

“Suit yourself. More for me.”

And that day, I had a whole can of soup to myself, seasoned with savory victory. With ill grace, she heated up a hot dog in the Presto Hot Dogger, and left me to my swampy feast.

She came running a few times after that at the smell of soup, but soon learned that my new recipe was a continuing thing, and ceased after that to bug me for soup. I’d gotten into the habit of seasoning with food coloring, and routinely added it without even thinking. Self defense, you know?

Which led to the incident of the football game.

I worked for the local paper in my teen years, and was sometimes assigned to cover the high school football games. I didn’t mind. My press credentials got me into the press box at the top of the stands, and we’d all sit there with our coffee and cocoa and hip flasks of volatile liquid … and hot soup in a thermos… and watch the game, take notes, pictures, and so on.

And at halftime, I felt a tad hungry. Cracked open the thermos, reversed the lid into a cup, and poured myself a cup of hot chicken soup, with crackers already crushed into it. I needed a spoon to eat it; it was a tad bit lumpy.

First one to notice was the photographer. His eyes bugged a bit, but he said nothing.
The spotter saw him staring at me, and his face twisted in horror as I spooned green slimy wiggly stuff into my mouth. The spotter leaned over and tapped the PTO guy on the shoulder, and he leaned over for a look, and his eyes did a Roger Rabbit as well.

I stoically ate my soup. It tasted fine to me. And the whole point of green soup was not CARING what other people thought, right? I should point out I was all of fourteen years old at the time, and I knew perfectly well what I was eating.

It never occurred to me that the smell of chicken soup might be misinterpreted by those who didn’t know what it WAS…and only saw a cup of lumpy green wormy goo…

Didn’t think anything of it until the announcer happened to glance over in mid announcement… with a hot mike. Did I mention that the announcer was one of those who had a flask of volatile liquid, rather than coffee?

**“And now, for your halftime enjoyment, the Wildcat Band will WHAT IN CHRIST’S NAME IS THAT SHIT?”
**
Things sort of went downhill after that. It was a while before I was allowed to cover another football game of a Friday night.

My sister STILL won’t let me forget about that…

2

I just snorted doughnut out of my facial orifice.

This is the best story I’ve read in a long time. I needed this, as my moods have been ugly lately. Thanks so much for the laughs!!!

At a sci-fi convention I once purchased a Klingon cookbook. There were directions for fried Ferengi ears, Andoriian brain matter, and bloodworm soup. The latter sounded much like your soup, only with thick noodles and red coloring. The Andorian recipe was cubes of blue jello in whipped cream.

3

Weirdly enough, I have in my possession the old Star Trek Cookbook paperback from the seventies. There is a Klingon recipe in it that is, essentially, a sort of bacon and onion pot pie.

It’s really quite good, although it’s a hell of a lot of trouble to make.

4

Nicely written! Funny.

I was the exact middle child. 3 above me, 3 below me. So I feel pain on both sides.

My younger brother would catch you in the kitchen making a PBJ. He’d run by and stick one grubby finger in to the PB&J on your bread and jam his finger in his mouth with an evil laugh. You had no choice but to give it to him after that performance. And proceed to make yourself another.
He’s still not respectful of personal boundaries.
(:))

5

:eek:

Naw.

My sister never would have tried that. With her, it was all about invoking parental authority.

And even as the older sibling, I can tell you that if I’D tried sticking my finger in her PB&J, I’d have left the kitchen WEARING it.

6

Weirdly enough, decades later, I had a similar experience with ketchup. They started making green ketchup, right? And my daughter absolutely fell in love with the stuff. I liked it well enough. My ex refused to touch it.

So later, they came out with PURPLE ketchup. My daughter loved it. My ex refused to touch it. And I tried it, and found that it tasted like paint.

We later tried a blind taste test between red, purple, and green ketchups. We discovered that if you couldn’t see what you were eating, there was no difference whatsoever in the flavor. But if I could see the purple, I could taste the purple.

But for some reason, the red and the green tasted the same to me.

So… that’s a thing I know now. And I guess it explains why the smell of perfectly good Campbell’s chicken soup made the whole press box sick…

7

So this means you’re red-green taste blind.

8

I only occasionally like to put pickle relish in my chicken salad. But I always do these days. Keeps my wife from stealing it.

9

Somehow, this was exactly what I needed to read today…

Thank you!

10

Delighted that I could lighten your day.

There’s only one subject on the internet at the moment, and I was getting tired of it.

11

The lil’wrekker did a jr.highschool Science fair project taste tasting the odd colored ketchups. She got an ‘A’.
IIRC-most people blindfolded couldn’t tell the difference in the taste.

(Very nice thread MWK, makes for a pleasant diversion:))

12

The OP, in the past, has done some of the funniest stuff I have ever seen. That giuve me an idea for a thread.

13

In my family, when I was growing up, the tradition was to take a bite of whatever snack that was temporarily unaccompanied on the kitchen counter. It was commonplace to take a quick bathroom stop and come back to the kitchen to find a bite out of your sandwich, donut, cookie, whatever.

My mother always held true to this tradition, even though she hated baloney!
~VOW

14

Brings to mind a bad habit I acquired in my teen years.

Upon arrival at home, my old man would often fix himself a Cuba Libre cocktail, and my mother would often join him. A Cuba Libre consists of a jolt of rum, a twist of lemon, and the balance being ice and Coca-Cola.

This meant a half full can of Coke on the counter in the kitchen.

In passing, I would often take a hefty swig out of said Coke can.

This irritated my mother. One cocktail was fine with Dad, but sometimes Mom wanted another one, and it irked her to find that a half full Coke can was suddenly down to a quarter can or less.

So one day, she drained the beef grease into an empty Coke can and left it sitting on the counter…

15

My dad used to work with a woman, his boss as I recall. He’d pop into her office & say, “I’m going out to lunch, want anything?”
Her response was always the same, “Just get me whatever you’re getting.”

This pissed him off to no end. He thought about what was the most singularly disgusting sandwich he could make. Finally one day he had enough, when she gave her usual response, he said, “I’m having lox & jelly on white bread.”

She never again uttered that sentence to him.

16

Back in the 70s, my male older brother decided that I and the babysitter (my parents were gone for two weeks) should make his lunch because we were female. He demanded a peanut butter and brown sugar sandwich right now. The babysitter was grossed out at the idea, but those were normal for my brothers. He kept demanding “Where’s my sandwich” while we were assembling it. Because he was being a jerk, we loaded down on the peanut butter. That sandwich was a brick. He whined. The sitter said “You make it how you like it, we make it how I like it.”

Thinking he was being clever, the next day he started demanding a bologna sandwich from the sitter and I. We made it alright. Bologna, peanut butter, and brown sugar. After that, he started making his own lunch again. :wink:

17

An eternal verity is that it is UNWISE to piss off those who prepare your food. Particularly if they didn’t wanna in the first place, but an authority figure has decreed it.

18

I used to eat my chicken noodle soup the same way, sans food coloring. It was my favorite comfort food thru college. Then suddenly, it was too salty. I don’t know if Campbell’s changed their recipe, or if Keebler started putting more salt on their club crackers, but the salt overload turned it from comfort food to bowl of ick.

Another childhood memory destroyed… :frowning:

19

It’s possible that they changed the recipe. It’s possible that your taste buds have changed; they do that as we get older. I couldn’t tell you which; Campbell’s Chicken Noodle tastes the same to me now as it did when I was twelve, or so I perceive it.

I do know that they tried to change the Chicken & Stars recipe a couple years back. Burned my biscuits to no end.

Y’see, Chicken & Stars is, to me, the definition of comfort food. In particular, it is The Comfort Food I Require When I Am Sick. Because my mother would bring me Campbell’s Chicken & Stars and a cold glass of Canada Dry Ginger Ale when I was sick enough to skip elementary school, and I do think I was a teenager before I realized that these products contain no medical benefit.

But served with a mother’s love, they made ME feel BETTER, durnit. And to this day, when the flu slaps me down, I want Chicken & Stars. Ginger ale is optional. The store brand is acceptable, but Campbell’s is preferred, at least unless Beloved Wife is going to bring it to me hot in the bowl and never let me see the can (because I am unsure I could tell the difference between Campbell’s and store brand by taste, to be honest).

So a couple years back, I got a sore throat, and on the way home from work, I picked up a couple cans of C&S. And when I prepared a can the following day, I had a WTF moment. As in “WTF is THIS s?”

In proper C&S soup, the stars are tiny star shaped flecks of pasta. Thousands of them per can, a veritable galaxy. Amidst the stellar clusters are chunks of carrot and asteroids of chunked chicken meat, all swirling in a nebula of yellow chicken broth. Like Chicken Noodle, I take mine with a half can of water; a full can dilutes the flavor too much.

THIS stuff… the first thing I noticed was the stars. Rather than tiny flecks of pasta, they were big, ungainly star-shaped cookie cutter things, nearly the size of my pinky fingernail. There were nowhere near as many as there might have been. And while there were a few little orange bits, there did not seem to be ANY chunks of chicken.

WTF?

I heated and ate it. It was awful. It tasted nothing like C&S. For that matter, it tasted nothing like chicken broth; it had a strange coppery taste, unpleasant, and far from the comforting chicken soup of my childhood.

And so on top of a cold, I had to deal with the bitter disappointment of another loss. The Campbell’s corporation had erased another scrap of my youth in the interest of corporate profit. My only comfort was that they would never see another dime of MY money again, damn their eyes!

And I got over my cold, and life moved on.

Some six months later, Beloved Wife asked me to pick up a couple cans of French Onion soup for cooking while I was out, and I obediently did so… and noticed that the Chicken & Stars cans looked different. I also noticed that the store brand had changed THEIR cans, to show the proper little star shaped flecks of pasta.

But Campbell’s had altered their labels to add the rather panicky-sounding legend, ORIGINAL RECIPE IS BACK!

I bought a can out of curiosity. When I got home, I opened it. It had the proper little star shaped flecks of pasta, tiny little things, and the requisite little chunks of chicken meat. I heated and ate it. It tasted like every other can of C&S I’ve ever eaten, albeit with a flicker of guilt (because I was eating C&S when I was not sick; this is just not done).

Ever since, I have wondered if the sales of Campbell’s Chicken & Stars just plummeted off a cliff when they tried sneaking in that copper flavored improperly-starred slop, and they did a quick about face, or what?