Who wants to eat princesses, anyway?

“Hey, Mom,” my daughter says right as I’m ladling soup into bowls. “Whatcha doin’?”

“Making dinner,” I say, and I holler for her brother to join us. Tonight I’m heating up Campbell’s chicken soup for my kids. My daughter’s is shaped like Disney princesses. My son’s can has Phineas and Ferb on the label.

Yes, I’m a victim of advertising. But I’m also a mom who’s hoping to serve her kids one meal they won’t complain about. Wasted food is wasted money.

As I heat up the soup, I’m thinking that the concept of soup made out of princesses is pretty disgusting.

Who would want to eat Cinderella? Even if you could get past the whole cannibal thing, you would still have to think about specifics. Glass slippers don’t offer a lot of ventilation. Cinderella probably has really bad foot odor that I want nothing to do with.

And what about Snow White? She might have poison residue that’s not USDA-approved.

Other princesses would be a lot more palatable. I bet you could cook up a nice gumbo made of half of Princess Ariel and Princess Tiana in frog form.

Or what about a goulash of roasted Beast? That sounds tasty. Belle could market a line of dishes to go with it. Just be careful they weren’t chipped.

I’d be most interested in trying the Phineas and Ferb soup. Platypus is probably a delicacy somewhere. I just hope that somebody took off Perry’s fedora before they added him to the pot.

But not to nitpick, if platypuses are mammals that lay eggs, then should this really be considered a poultry-based soup, or is it more of a meat stew?

Unfortunately, my dreams for a complaint-free dinner have gotten all tangled. It turns out neither of my children like either soup. They’re both used to homemade soup, instead of soup with gimmicks.

Soup that sells cartoons, and cartoons that sell soup are hard concepts for them to swallow.

Then, when dinnertime is over, I have to deal with the leftovers. Mixing the princesses into Phineas and Ferb’s tri-state area seems really wrong. Is this soup still rated G? It’s a good thing I don’t have an older sister watching me, because she would totally bust me.

Disney princesses and Phineas and Ferb are swimming around in Tupperware right now, and it’s a whole new world of soup. I call it “The Left-overs-inator.”

Even Dr. Doofenshmirtz would be impressed.

Jennifer Bardsley writes at teachingmybabytoread.blog.com.

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