Pre Progresso it was Campbell’s or the house brand. Maybe canned soups are a middle of the country thing too.
I remember the commercials!
Mmmmm good!
Mmmmm good!
That’s what Campbell’s soup is
Mmmmm good!
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Once upon a long time ago, it tasted (a lot) better than it does now, too… 
Progresso - which ironically (or not?) has been owned by Campbell’s for decades at least, is way better, and some of the “newer” Campbell’s, like their “Chunky” line, are on a par with Progresso imnsho. But the original condensed soups are really pretty bad at this point, even the ones that should theoretically stand up to the whole “condensed” thing better than others, like split pea and lentil…
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Perhaps canned soup was a middle of the Century rather than a middle of the Country thing. We always had Campbell’s chicken noodle and tomato on hand. Cream of Mushroom and Cream of Chicken were staples of mid-Century Casserole culture. When we were married, new husband told me he never wanted to see me use canned soup in cooking. So he came home one day to find me making mushroom soup to use in a currently popular recipe. Campbell’s tomato soup was a mandatory companion to a grilled cheese sandwich in those days.
What I find boggling in this conversation is what I read as preference for Progresso to Campbells. We use almost no canned soup except for chicken broth, but while we get carried away by sales or tantalizing sounding names, we pour more Progresso down the drain than we eat. We have never found one that is palatable. Maybe we’re buying the wrong “flavors”.
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At it’s most basic, it’s essentially Eastern Europe’s answer to “pasta in brodo”… though usually made with heavier/thicker pasta than Italians typically use for that. But with the addition of shredded chicken meat and sliced vegetables like carrots, celery, onion, and sometimes corn and/or potatoes, it can be turned into a much more substantial “one dish meal”…
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In my jewish household I had grandma’s. 
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I finally got around to posting this to the Boston board, and I filled it out myself. Hope that helps!
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Thank you very much!
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I buy no canned soup these days, but I was talking about the marketing of Progresso as a more upscale product.
Whether actually true or not is sketchy, as you note.
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I find Progresso’s (and Campbell’s Chunky’s) “basics” - like beef barley, chicken noodle, lentil, split pea - OK, especially for last-minute eating, though not worth their usual MRSP by any means. (But then, I feel the same way about a lot of commercially-made soups at delis, “food bars”/buffets, and many restaurants…) The ones with what I think of as “tantalizing” (trendy?) names that seem to be trying to ride on current culinary trends’ coat-tails, otoh, not so much… Though - maybe due to care in selection bred by cynicism - I’ve yet to come across one that was so bad that I threw out it after one or two spoonfuls…
I did find myself extremely nonplussed once, when a minimal-English-speaking fellow supermarket patron standing in front of a canned soup sale display ($1-$1.25 can) saw me looking through them and asked me if they were “delicious”… 
I optimistically put that particular word choice down to the language barrier, but still, thinking she’d probably misinterpret a gale of laughter and having no idea what her basis for comparison was (after all, I think a lot of the prepared food that Russian immigrants around here line up and pay too much for is terrible too), I ended up hemming and hawing an awful lot as I stumbled through a tortured attempt to explain - in “basic English” - that " ‘delicious’ was an awfully strong word for canned soup, that some of them were ‘OK’, but that, mostly, you can’t beat ~16 g of tolerable-tasting protein you can heat up in less than 5 minutes in the microwave for $1.25…" I have to admit she didn’t seem much less confused when I’d finished than she’d been beforehand, but I figured I’d best quit while I wasn’t too far behind…
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I completed it for you
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Just when I thought I’d heard of everything 
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That walking salad sounds like a recipe for food poisoning.
Mayonnaise and cottage cheese out on the trail! Yikes 
I don’t remember the walking salad but I might have eaten it.
Decades later, still don’t like cottage cheese, but love mayonnaise.
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Hello! I still need 30 answers to reach the goal 
If you know people who can fill out the survey, could you please help me?
Here’s the link: https://unibocconi.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_9n9lD8Z1vt37pgp
I would really appreciate, thanks for the collaboration!
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I just shared with one of my FB groups. I hope it works.
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Thank you!
Aiuterei voluntieri. I would gladly help out. But since I’m not in the US, I’m not eligible.
I’m wondering if anyone at all has seen pasta companies marketing on the basis of covid-19 issues. The questions in the survey surprised me. But I don’t see many ads–they’re blocked on websites and I fast-forward on TV.
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Giulia - I filled out you survey. Was a bit confused about ranking the sentences in order of importance to me but I did figure it out. Best wishes to you in your studies!!
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