"bowlful" is a correct and usable word in written English.
You can use it to describe a full bowl, or an amount that fills a bowl. Example: I took a bowlful of cereal for breakfast this morning.
It took a year to muster an Arab counter-strike, but on October 24th a squadron of Lebanese chefs cooked up a bunker-busting bowlful that weighed in at over 2,000kg.
When, in a live radio programme sponsored by General Foods, the presenter asked him to tell an enormous national audience whether he enjoyed any special breakfast food, Gehrig replied "a heaping bowlful of Wheaties".
If the shredded duck in this generous bowlful of sharply-dressed slaw had been hot and crisp, rather than cold and tough, it would have been much the better dish.
A bowlful of devils on horseback (£4) are deliciously moreish; and a strongly recommended Camembert fondue (£10) has the words "to share" in brackets next to it, which seems to me a bit misleading, for at least two reasons.
"One can't work / by lime light," Ryan wrote in a punning poem in her 2000 collection, "Say Uncle": "A bowlful / right at / one's elbow / produces no / more than / a baleful / glow against / the kitchen table".
(After visiting China, Richard Nixon tried to show his daughter how strong the stuff was by putting a match to a bowlful; he set the table on fire, according to Henry Kissinger).
Soup, as it's known, is a monthly gathering, held above the MexicanTown Bakery in southwestern Detroit, where guests pay $5 for a homemade bowlful, salad (locally grown, to be sure) and dessert, and sit at tables made of doors laid over milk crates, listening as compatriots propose projects.
Wrist-deep in a bowlful of unpeeled bananas, she nodded at me. "You'll have to get that".
If there is a bowlful of condoms in a massage parlor, we want our officers to be able to seize them as evidence against the trafficker".
They include the hammerhead shark, whose fins are highly prized in China for soup, with a bowlful selling for as much as $100.
But for the petite Ms. Sebastian, a few added vegetables convert the bowlful of noodles into a fresh and healthy choice, easing away the guilt of eating "junk".
