Campbell's Everyday Gourmet Roasted Potato & Spring Leek

One thing I'm certain of in this crazy world is that I really like packaged soups (in limited flavours, it goes without saying). I really love those dry Knorr soups (in minestrone, broccoli, or potato-leek) and I also really like the Campbell's Garden Minestrone. Campbell's used to have a condensed minestrone, but they seem to have gotten rid of it. I also really liked those cartons of soup that Campbell's put out. They came in broccoli and potato & leek, and I think that maybe they were "Gardennay," which presumably is a division of Campbell's. Anyway, they were always really good, but also pretty expensive, so I would just wait until they went on sale. Even on sale they were pretty expensive, but they were also a lot better than the other soup options, so I would go for it.

Recently I have noticed that Campbell's changed their packaging for these soups. Now they're "Campbell's Everyday Gourmet" instead of "Gardennay." They're a lot brighter and modern, and part of me thinks they might be Andy Warhol-inspired. But the packaging works. Their line-up of carton soups looks appealing and hip.

This picture took me a really long time to make and didn't come out nearly as well as I had hoped for.

So I picked up a box of their Roasted Potato & Spring Leek, assuming it would be the exact same soup as before. But it isn't. I don't like it. And I think that what I don't like about it is the "gourmet" aspect. It takes like a bunch of Campbell's execs in charge of the soup division (I don't know if there are any other divisions at Campbell's) talking about how they need to make this soup more appealing, and that something that appeals to people is the word "gourmet," and that adding too much pepper to something is a way that one can achieve that "gourmet-taste." This soup literally just tastes like pepper.

But it also has a not very nice texture to it. Like, every once in a while you come across a chunk and you can't be certain if it's a piece of potato peel or a piece of leek or some stray piece of garbage that made it into the batch ... until you get it in your mouth and realize it's actually just a clump of pepper.

I am honestly getting so fed up with Campbell's these days. They're also gluten-free. I will not buy this soup again.

My hunger did I try to allay

With Campbell's Everyday Gourmet.

Dressed up pepper-garbage in a Warhol design

Unfortunately this soup is not suitable to dine. 

Stop screwing around, Campbell's, and bring back Gardennay!

Remembrance of Tacos Lost

Remember that time I tried a taco and really liked it? Well, within a week of that positive experience I tried another taco and it was disgusting. I recently found pictures of the experience.

 This is what they looked like. Gross, right? Raw onion and cilantro?

And here's a picture of me eating one.

And here's another. I think I ate three in total.

Onion Salad

This onion salad enrages me.  I hate it.  I hate it so much, and my mum seems to make it about once a month.  I know it shouldn’t bother me because I don’t have to eat it or interact with it beyond having to look at it (and sometimes smell it), but it makes me so angry that this is even a thing that a person would eat.  It has absolutely nothing going for it, like absolutely zero redeemable features:

Later I will compare this to tapeworms covered in sperm, but it also kind of looks like fettuccine alfredo.  I guess if
forced, I would eat the fettuccine alfredo first, then probably the tapeworms covered in sperm, and then I would
kill myself before I had to ingest this disgusting mixture.

1. It’s a salad. Okay, I will let this one go because I know that most people eat salad in one form or another and that it’s pretty normal. But still, gross.
2. With the exception of the sauce/topping/dressing, it’s actually just onions.  Raw onions.  In a bowl.
3. Saying that they’re “raw” onions might have been a bit deceiving because they’re actually pickled onions.  They have been soaking in vinegar!  It’s disgusting.
4. There are other things involved in this salad that I don’t even know about.  Is it mayonnaise?  Is it sour cream?  Who knows!  But whatever it is, it’s white and creamy and I can guarantee that it doesn’t go with onions and I can almost guarantee that it’s probably mayonnaise (maybe).

Revolting.  Let me say it again, but this time like this: Re-volting. Revolting. This salad is revolting.

God, I hate this salad so much.  In addition to how disgusting it actually is, I always have to endure the inevitable conversation of how good it is, and how no one can believe how good it is because it looks like the aftermath of taking your cat to the vet because her body is riddled with tape worms. Did anyone else watch that episode of the Tyra Banks Show?  The one about girls who give themselves tapeworms to lose weight?  Because those tapeworms are almost exactly what this onion salad looks like, if you collected them all in a bowl and then stored them in your fridge.  I would include a picture of a tapeworm for reference, but I think it would be too stressful for me.  Tapeworms are very overwhelming for me.  Much like this disgusting salad.

Maybe once you get up close to it you can tell it's onions, but it really doesn't make it any more appetizing.

Should I have included this in the more general salad post?  Perhaps.  Did I?  I can't remember.  But in any case I am posting it here now because I am back in Grand Forks for reading break and I had to encounter this salad and it made me really upset.

Both the subject of onions and the poor quality of the poem that you're about to read reminds me of one of my earliest posts on the shallot, from all the way back in September 2012. 

Here's something that makes me puke in my mind:

Pickled onions in a bowl like a tangle of so many tapeworms

And if that isn't the word "revolting" defined,

Then imagine if those onions were coated in billions of sperms.

The Shallot

The Oxford English Dictionary defines a shallot as:

1. a small bulb which resembles an onion and is used for pickling or as a substitute for onion.
2. the plant which produces shallots, each mature bulb producing a cluster of smaller bulbs.

A pathetic attempt at an onion.

I know because I looked it up. Because I had no idea what a shallot was. The OED also offered this helpful spelling (t)ip: “Spell shallot with a double l.” Anyway, I’ll make this short since the shallot holds no interest for me. Onions are plentiful, so I would never feel the need to find a substitute. To address the second and more admirable point that the Oxford English Dictionary brings up: while I have no need for shallots, I am quite fond of bulbs.

In conclusion, the shallot is redundant and unnecessary.

On either side the river lie

Long fields of barley and of rye,

My tum lets out a gentle sigh:

A tender inkling for a pie.

But, perhaps, on second thought

There is no time to make the dough

No need for pie, therefore forego

Devoid of food, but full of woe--

Alas! There's only the Shalott*

*Tennyson evidently did not receive the OED's memo.