About soup

I have a stash of frozen entrees and cans of soup at my office. These come in handy on days when I forget my lunch at home or if the weather is bad. The weather was particularly nasty earlier this week and soup was the logical choice. My desk drawer stash was down to one can of soup purchased at Kroger--three cans for $5.

Armed with my favorite soup bowl, a plastic spoon and my last can of stashed soup, I headed to the break room. When I opened the can of soup I should have stopped right then and there. The color was, well, unexpected. I ignored the warning going off in my brain and dumped the bright orange matter it into the bowl. It looked nothing like the creamy goodness depicted on the can, but I kept going.

I covered the bowl with a paper towel, placed it in the microwave, pressed "2" and leaned back against the counter pondering the photo on the soup can. I gave the can a quick sniff. It was a familiar smell that my brain wouldn't register. I rinsed out the can and tossed it in the recycling bin. Maybe it just smelled bad when it was cold. (This is called denial.) The microwave beeped. I gave the orange substance a stir and put it in for another minute. The odor aroma of the soup spread throughout the break room, but I paid it no mind. I was hungry. Surely the soup, once heated, would be as tasty as spicy buffalo wings, right?

There are common courtesy rules when it comes to heating up food in a shared break room. The first is cover your food and wipe up any spills. Easy, but not carried out by everyone. A couple other rules are to never reheat fish and don't burn popcorn. Ever! Your coworkers will hunt you down and speak badly of you for the rest of the day (or until someone else does something equally or more digusting.) I'm adding a third rule--do not microwave bright orange soup. This constitutes "more disgusting".

In retrospect, I can spot several instances when I should have aborted this effort, yet I forged ahead.

I took the soup to my desk, which meant walking to the other side of the building as gentle whiffs of bright orange viscous soup polluted 5,237 square feet of office cubicles.

This is the soup in my favorite soup bowl. It's a cute bowl. It's crappy soup.

Several days earlier I had wrapped a birthday gift for a friend and had some leftover bright orange tissue paper. The soup is the same color as the tissue paper. Orange tissue paper is pretty. Orange soup is freakin' nasty.

I used my plastic spoon to swirl the soup about and check out the contents. It contained some sizable chunks of potato and celery and three pieces of wrinkled chicken-like material. Like an idiot, I actually put a spoonful of it in my mouth. Holy mother of purl! What. The. Hell. The bubble of denial that I was so carefully protecting shattered instantly. Vomit. The soup literally tasted and smelled like vomit. So what did I do? I tried it again but with my nose plugged. I gagged. Someone once said "hunger is the best spice." That someone never tried Campbell's Chunky New Kickin' Buffalo-Style Chicken soup.

I covered the bowl and, as nonchalantly as possible, carried the bowl back to the break room. The plan? Dump and run. The soup was too chunky to go down the drain but not solid enough for the garbage. I was torn and I panicked. I dumped it in the trash. The viscous broth oozed around the discarded food containers turning everything in its path orange. I have seen my dog barf up that exact same chunky orange substance. Once the soup combined with the other garbage, some sort of osmosis occurred and the smell intensified. I was guilty of polluting the break room. Twice. I pulled a bunch of paper towels out of the dispenser and camouflaged the mess as best I could. Then I ditched.

This was simply the worst food I have ever tasted in my life. I'm not exaggerating. This is a sick joke on a magnificent level because it's too vile to have passed the taste test at Campbell's Soup. If you have this soup in your cupboard take it back to the store. Don't give it away. Don't feed it to your dog. It will only confuse your dog--"Whoa! I don't remember puking! But this is definitely puke and I eat my puke, so down the hatch...again."

Even if the soup is free, don't eat it. Go hungry. It's the Walmart of soup.

(Campbell's owes me $1.67...plus tax)