Easy Ways to Good Meals - or What? Soup? Again?

99 dishes made with soup. They couldn't come up with 100?

Now let's be truthful here: What housewife isn't seduced by the idea of easy meals - especially when they involve congealed masses of starch resting upon vegetable soup? (As long as she isn't seduced by the tango-dancing yam.) But that's okay, as long as the requisite sprig of parsley is present.

I confess to having succumbed to this particular temptation. Yes, I'm afraid I have to cook the grean bean casserole on an annual basis, and I admit that I have bathed chicken breasts in Cream of Mushroom Soup until everything was a gooey mess. But the latter act was just being thrifty! I had to use that can o'soup left over from Thanksgiving, right?

Or not.

The copy inside the book also suggests that you can use soups as - soups! This book was published in 1941, before there was a war on. It was still okay to use a food product for its originally intended purpose

Let's see what horrors await:

Bride's Chicken Loaf is on the far right. As we know, brides can't cook, so food manufacturers took great pains to show newlywed women that it was indeed possible to prepare good meals - as long as they were accompanied by slabs of barf on concrete.

Pictured above are six alien refugees from an early Dr Who episode maquerading as Ham and Egg Shortcake. Watch out, Doctor! Those radishes are radioactive!

As if those glowing condiments weren't enough, the aliens follow up with mushy eyeballs!

And here's the crown for the alien monarch! Either that, or it was used as a prop in a 1950s sci-fi film.

Here's the perfect dish for your next dinner party: gumbo topped with pineappe ring and unidentifiable garnish.

And for your next al fresco luncheon, why not serve food that represents the outdoors?

Of course! It's a lawn chair and a beach umbrella!

And finally, it's time to get festive! Party patterns with soup! Red, white and lime green for that festive tough that says, "I've spent the day at the uranium plant and I've brought you a gift!"