Many years it had been since I’d opened a can of Campbell’s chicken noodle soup. Ah, the comfort food of my spent youth. The familiar homey smell, the salty and satisfying taste, the tiny bits of nano-chicken and microscopic bits of vegetables that floated here and there in the oily broth. And best of all: the long, fat, bleached, enriched noodles. I inhaled them as one might inhale spaghetti strands. I often drank the rest of the soup just to save the savory noodles for last, not unlike dessert.
But now, I buy a few cans just for old times’ sake, and what do I find? Skinny little wimpy-ass shreds o’ dough that try and fail to pass for noodles! Mere shadows of their former selves! Silly clones that do no justice to their originals! I feel cheated, ripped off and scammed, with no discernible recourse. God, how I wish I had kept some cans from the old days. When did they start this despicable noodle-minimizing practice? And why?
There ought to be a store somewhere that sells Food The Way You Remember It. In such a place, I might find those lovely, chubby, unhealthful but oh-so-good noodles that I used to run home for.
Fie upon Campbell’s, I say. Fie!
Are you sure you didn’t buy the “skinny noodle” variety?
My chicken noo-noo, noodles were fine. (You know - fat.)
Yeah, second that, Campbell’s has been dicking around with the Basic Soup for a while now, and you have to really rummage around on the store shelves to make sure you’ve got the Genuine Chicken Noodle Soup. They got all kinds of annoying Theme and Variations, Curly Noodle, Double Noodle, Noodle-O’s (now that one is truly irritating).
It’s a dead giveaway that you’ve got the Designer Chicken Noodle soup if it costs like $1.50 per can. Look down on the bottom shelf, where the price says 79 cents. That’s the stuff you want.
Chicken noodles.
Bah. I was thinking I had a kindred spirit in the pasta aisle.
Here I get a great recipe for fettucine with creamy tomato sauce. So I head down to Vons to get the ingredients. I’m standing in the pasta aisle, looking for the store brand-o-pasta. Yeah, I’m a cheap turd. Creamette or Anthony’s is just TOO pricey for me. And do you know what? Vons store brand does NOT MAKE fettucine. Or if they make it, MY STORE DOESN’T have shelf space for it.
Oh sure, they’ve got a whole shitpile of angel hair. Regular spaghetti? By the pantload. Can’t a poor wop get a bag of thick pasta for cheap around here?
So it appears you’re not the only one who wants their fat noodles back. And no, I’m not insane. Really.
I miss “knife-cut noodles” with beef (Mandarin: daoxiao niuroumian). Really thick, really filling.
Also, Japanese soba (sp?) noodles are pretty good.
All your udon are belong to us!
Wah! As Americans get fatter, apparently our noodles get skinnier.
- sob *
Sigmund Freud would say that many of the above Posters see noodles as a phallic symbol.
How disturbing.
Since I like knife-cut noodles, does that make me hentai?
Quite, especially since soup noodles tend to be distressingly limp 
Oh, but sometimes…
…a noodle is just a noodle.
This thread reminds me of something that happened to my Dad recently. A few months back, he bought a few cans of Ray’s Chilli while in Peoria. He wrote the company a complaint that their quality seems to have gone downhill since he was a kid. He got a letter back from the president saying he’d tested that batch himself and he thought it was their best in a long time. And they sent a case of Chilli and hot dog sauce. Now that’s service. Ray’s Chilli, for the record, kicks as much ass as canned chili can kick.
Damn, just noticed I nearly capitalized “president.” Now that would be an odd occurrence, although I’m sure Dubya knows his chili…
Boo! Hiss! I like the Noodle-O’s – they don’t hang off the edge of the spoon and flick broth everywhere.
Scarlett, currently enjoying a bowl of Campbell’s Italian Wedding Soup – a bit too salty but OK if I’m in a hurry
But, Viva, gahk* is best served live.
*chicken noodles
Do they actually make the noodles out of chicken in chicken noodle soup?
That would be so cool…
Or to put a finer point on it: Do they actually make the chicken out of chicken?
:eek:
Ooh, ooh! What if the noodles are still the same size and you’re getting bigger? Do you have to duck when walk through doorways? Did you just buy an American car because those damn imports are so uncomfortable anymore? Do you complain to your girlfriends how shoe sizes are no longer the same? Are more and more guys slow dancing with you at the night clubs?
Think about it, Viva.
Thinking…thinking…Yes! That explains why I have been using my car as a skateboard to get to work!