The Journey Begins. With Ramen.

OK.  First post.  Expectations are high.  I’ve racked my brain as to what to feature first, because it will set the tone for this entire rinky-dink project I’ve embarked on.  My choice is…. [drum roll, please]

Ramen.

I’m not talking funky, sketchy, hole-in-the-wall noodle restaurant where no one speaks English ramen,  I mean the broke college kid, can buy on Amazon by the pallet, 25 cent packs of Maruchan Ramen Noodles, Top Ramen, or the packs that you get at the Asian markets that have no English writing on them at all.  The stuff that takes 3 minutes to make, but college boys everywhere have been overcooking into gummy, sodium-filled mush.

As I hope you’ll all see one day, I have a very refined palate (ramen aside), and I love good food.  I can dine with the best of them.  But some days, I get home from work, after dealing with DC traffic, and DC people, and DC overpopulation, and the last thing I want to do is go out to a restaurant and listen to some over-caffeinated yuppies and their demon child go three rounds of “What do you want to eat, pumpkin-angel??” while Pumpkin Angel throws his cup at Dad’s head.  So that leaves me with fending for myself, and of course, my own demon child – Husband.  He and I have been poor – I don’t mean cool, hipster austerity poor; real poor, like, deciding whether to pay the heat bill or to eat for the week.  In January.  In Buffalo, NY.  Yeah.  That poor.  We are no strangers to ramen.  I can thank those fallow periods, though, for the inventive ways I’ve found to sex up the packs of ramen.  It used to be whatever I could find in my fridge that hadn’t acquired a soul of it’s own.

The possibilities are endless and you can add literally, whatever you want.  Ramen is a lovely, blank canvas, but like, the paint by numbers one – you’ve got a soup base (blank canvas), which is the hard part.  Now you just get to color it in (the fun part).

The bowl above started out with the Maruchan Oriental flavor ramen noodles.  I poured all of that deliciousness into the festive Kate Spade Market Street bowl (you’re supposed to plug everything and reference everything by name when you blog, right??) and I then added pieces of chicken from a $5 rotisserie chicken I picked up at Harris Teeter, already cooked, sesame oil, sriracha, onion powder, chives, Korean red pepper flakes, and topped it all off with some seaweed snacks that I cut into triangles and artfully placed atop this budget delicacy.  Now, you may be wondering what my recipe was for each of these ingredients; the measurements.  I couldn’t tell you.  At least not without sounding like a ginormous, pretentious douche bag – ‘oh, it was just a smidge of the pepper flakes, and a dash of the onion powder’.  When I create masterpieces like this, I don’t measure.  I know myself, and my tastes, and I let that guide me.  I will say though, that sesame oil is a very potent and concentrated oil, so in order to not overpower the flavor of what you’r’e eating, you only need a few drops in a bowl this size.  But, I like spicy – so I added a good, healthy squirt (that’s what she said) of sriracha, and a ton of the Korean red pepper flakes.  I’ve been known to add other gems such as kimchi, gochujang paste, scallions, even a steamed dumpling or two.  As I said, the possibilities are only limited by your own tastes.

This is just one of many science projects I create when I’m hungry and left to my own devices.  Now I have a place to share them all with you.  I hope you’re inspired to make your own ramen.  If so, send me a message telling me what you made!

Let’s eat!  In the words of my dad: “What’s hunger got to do with it?”