Italian Tomato & Mascarpone Soup - Morrisons

It's lunchtime! And thanks to the invention of canned products I have a few lunches stashed away in my desk draw at work. My soup of choice today is a can of tomato and mascarpone, made by Morrisons from their signature range. It always makes me chuckle when you see the supermarkets branding their more premium range of products, Tesco with its Finest range, Sainsbury's with its Taste the Difference, Asda with its Extra special range, and now Morrisons with the Signature range. Its like they have a guy sat there thinking of ways to make things sound a bit premium in a variety of ways, that guy must of got an A* in English...

Back to the soup! I wonder if this simple soup combination of flavours will match that of the great Heinz tomato classic, lets find out...

The verdict:

This is more than a soup, this is a taste sensation! wow! My taste buds are blown! It opened up a world of imagination in my mind. I couldn't work out if I was eating a pasta bake sauce, or a slice of cheese pizza?! It tastes just like a real Italian pizza base sauce. A soup that tastes like pizza... this is what dieting dreams are made of! 

The creamy texture mixed with the sweet juicy tomato chunks just melt in your mouth. Its perfectly seasoned and has that Italian herb touch to it, its not at all over bearing it has just the right balance. I honestly cant fault this soup. All I can really say is if you don't like pizza don't try this soup, and if you don't like pizza, what is wrong with you?!!?

Souper rating: 5 out of 5 - There is a God out there. He/She works at Morrisons and invented a relatively healthy soup that tastes just like pizza. God bless you soup inventor.

Minestrone Soup - Heinz

It's Lunchtime! Which means it's soup time!
I'm actually really looking forward to having soup today seeing as my routine was rudely interrupted by work trying to better my skills. I'm not bitter, I thoroughly enjoyed my training in the big smoke. I just missed having my warm bowl of soup, and the 20 minutes of typing a poorly written blog.
Today I have chosen one of the Heinz classic variety, minestrone soup. I do like a good minestrone soup, although, I can say I have never tried the Heinz variety, so I will be able to compare it mentally to ones I have had in the past.
Minestrone to me is something people either love or hate. When I first asked a friend what they thought about minestrone they said it was a watery, bland soup that really isn't worth wasting time over... This point was soon proven wrong.
I moved house roughly a year ago near to a village called Hartley Wintney, it was here that I realised minestrone doesn't have to be the way my friend described. The local Italian restaurant (Bellini) serve minestrone as the house soup, and its absolutely delicious! Its a wonderfully lightly spiced soup full of vegetables, beans, and tiny pieces of cute looking pasta all in a perfectly seasoned broth.
I never usually order soup in restaurants, I save them for the working week. But on this occasion something inside me said "try the soup, try a true Italian soup". One of the best decisions I ever made.

The verdict:

I think I am going to stick to either making my own minestrone soup, or ordering it from my local Italian. It was an acceptable tasting soup, nothing truly awful about it. It just didn't wow me, and to be honest it didn't feel satisfying. 

The consistency is very runny, not watery, but runny. It felt like there was no real bite to it unless you got a piece of veg or a bean. Granted it was full of 'bits', but these bits were not very appealing, nor did they look it. The soup tasted like someone had mixed a can of baked beans with a can of tomato spaghetti, then threw in a handful of cheap frozen mixed veg. Oh and a hand full of old dried out mixed herb leaves. It just isn't comparable to the minestrone's I've had in the past, whether that be from a restaurant or a fresh tub from the supermarket.

Souper rating: 2.5 out of 5 - I'm not really sure this should be called a minestrone soup, but who am I? I'm not part of the soup police, I'll leave it up to the experts to name a soup so I can just approve or criticise.