Refrigerator Copy

Column published the week of September 1, 2008 www.theleeonline.com © 2008, Lee Ostaszewski

Daily Noodle Fix

By Lee Ostaszewski The stuff is crazy addictive. Imagine a combination of crack cocaine, methamphetamine and those mini Snickers bars that keep calling to me every year from my kids’ Halloween bags, “Just take one more, they won’t notice.” That type of addictive power is found in those dry Raman noodle soup packages I can’t stop eating for lunch. It’s all compressed together into a 3 ounce dried noodle cake complete with that magical flavor packet: a heroin-like substance that gets sprinkled on top, waiting only for hot water to create oriental soup nirvana. That’s why one company calls it Smack Raman. I quit the junk for a while. But it’s a monkey that doesn’t stay off my back for long. Over the past twenty plus years I’ve been riding the Raman noodle soup roller coaster. And this time my own two sons were involved. They got a taste of the noodle, and now they, too, are hooked. Before I knew what happened, the stuff was in my house again. Like Lindsay Lohan stocking her own bar, I figured I could handle it. I eat healthier now. I’m decades removed from college life, when I was introduced to it. I don’t need Raman noodle soup to make me happy. I have other ways of getting a taste buzz. I’ve had Pepperidge Farm Milano cookies. At first I was fine with Raman noodle soup being in the house, but after a couple days had passed the packages started whispering enticingly to me through the pantry door, “Just one bowl. You know you want it. C’mon, what harm could it do?” I thought about it long and hard before realizing that, you know what, the Raman noodle soup was right; what harm could one bowl do? I thought, “It’s not like I can’t stop if I want to. I’ll have one small bowl, purely for nostalgic reasons. It’ll be fun. I’ll have it for lunch today, then tomorrow I will go back to eating what I normally would eat for lunch, although for some reason I can’t seem to recall what that is.” As you probably guessed, the Raman noodles lied to me. The first Raman noodle soup lunch led to another then another and now here it is a couple weeks later and every morning I’m already jonesing for my Raman noodle fix for the day.

Yes, I am a Raman noodle soup junky. There were two things I left college addicted to. Three if you count watching “The People’s Court.” The other two were frozen burritos and Raman noodle soup. These are classic guy-living-on-his-own-for-the-first-time foods because they are 1) inexpensive, 2) taste great, and 3) require a level of cooking skill that a moderately talented trained seal could perform. Actually, a trained seal would be overqualified. Although in college my friends and I were pretty ingenious when it came to making the Raman noodle soup. And by ingenious I mean lazy. The directions called for cooking the soup in a pan, and right away we were like, “Whoa, a pan! Who do they think we are, the Iron Chef? Which happens to be a reference to a show that won’t be on television for another two decades.” Our concerns were as prescient as they were valid. Yes, it starts with a pan, but then you need a lid for the pan, and how about a ladle to stir the noodles as they cook? Of course, the pan will be hot so you will want the soup served in a bowl, and probably you will need a spoon to eat it with. The whole process became very complicated very quickly. That’s why we perfected the cooking of Raman noodle soup using only a spoon, a microwave oven, and a large, plastic souvenir stadium cup, the kind you get at sporting events. We would break up the noodles into the plastic stadium cup, sprinkle the flavor/heroin packet over the noodles, fill with water, and microwave on high for about 3 minutes. As the microwaves heated the water, the fla-eroin dissolved, along with thousands of stadium cup molecules released from the plastic sides, many of which were absorbed into the noodles, softening them as well as making them dishwasher safe. It might not have been the healthiest thing to eat or the best way to cook them. But we were in college and therefore invincible (i.e.: stupid). Today, I make much better choices. When jonesing for Raman noodle soup I stay clear of plastic stadium cups. I only use approved cookware. I’m no Iron Chef, but I’m not a kid anymore, either. I watch what I eat. ■