I love ramen! ::ramen::

When I was a young Davidling my parents only let us have ramen on Sundays for lunch after church, so it was sort of a special thing. We made it on the stove and my parents only made it with half the flavoring cause they thought it was too much salt. They also dumped out the broth. Anyway we always had the chicken flavor, but since becoming woke and vegan, I realized there are two vegan flavors of Nissin ramen:

So naturally, now I keep a stash of multiple stacked cases of ramen in my corner and I have a bowl almost every day. It's the college student stereotype, definitely, but I love it. Time has brought me nothing but a deeper appreciation for my delicious warm mush. Here is the process:

The Process

  1. Retrieve two (2) packs of Chili flavor ramen from my stash.
    • (Once in a while I indulge in a Soy Sauce, but I have decided that Chili is generally far superior.)
  2. Open wrappers and dump contents into one (1) of those large plastic bowls I think are from Walmart.
    • (They are the only bowls we have that are powerful enough to contain my ramen. They also don't get too hot in the microwave, making the hot bowl easier to handle. But I'll get to that...)
  3. Remove flavor packets. Place them on the wrappers for temporary staging.
  4. Rub/tap the two dry noodle blocks against each other, above the bowl, to shed all the tiny broken bits of noodle into the bowl.
    • (These bits would make later stirring slightly more annoying.)
  5. Eat the small pile of tiny noodle bits.
    • (Yummy crunchy...)
  6. Return noodle blocks to the bowl.
  7. Fill the bowl with water, maybe two-thirds of the way to the top of the dry noodles.
  8. Microwave for 3:00.
    • (Wander into Paul's room or something while waiting.)
  9. Forget about it for some amount of time 0:00-30:00 (optional).
  10. Get a fork. Flip the noodles, dipping the previously dry top noodles into the water, covering them with the already hydrated ones.
  11. Poke the noodles, breaking them up, stir a bit. Set fork down somewhere random on the counter.
  12. Microwave for another 3:00.
  13. Forget about it for another 0:00-30:00 (optional).
  14. Forget about previous fork and get another one out (optional).
  15. Stir it briskly for a time, whipping almost.
    • (It seems like this wets all the noodles and absorbs the water evenly the way I like.)
  16. After some stirring, add 1.5-2 flavor packets. Place the empty flavor packets delicately on the noodle wrappers to avoid dusting the counter with chili seasoning.
    • (Usually I add both, but sometimes I just want a bit less spice/salt. I guess I still have some of my parent's urge to consume less salt internalized.)
  17. Roll up all the wrapper garbage carefully (to not expel chili dust) and throw it away.
  18. More stirring. Slowly at first, to not kick up dust, until the powder is all wetted.
  19. Make your way to wherever you plan on eating. Or just squat on the kitchen floor.
  20. Continue stirring, evenly spreading the flavoring around, perhaps chatting with friends or watching Paul work, until you get bored or hungry enough and stirring bleeds into eating
  21. Enjoy! ::smile::
    • (Slurping the noodles is usually the most enjoyable way to eat, especially if the water-to-noodle ratio was perfect, it wasn't sitting forgotten in the microwave for too long, and it's cooled just enough to not burn your mouth.)
    • (When left for a while, the noodles get fat and soft, and sometimes quite dry. This is still enjoyable, just with a very different mouthfeel (more like chomping than slurping).)
    • (The optimal eating position is squatting, holding the bowl in one hand, feeling the warmth through the bowl, with fork in the other hand.)

::ramen::