lunch review: “exotic” ramen

Samyang Ramen Cup Noodle Soup Original Flavor

ive decided that cup noodles are the best option for a hot lunch in the office for the reason that you dont have to wait in line for the microwave and then dawdle awkwardly around the staff kitchen for the few minutes that it takes for your food to heat up.  all you hafta do with cup noodles is peel back the lid and fill with hot water…a trip to the kitchen that lasts an estimated fifteen seconds.  then, you can let the hot water do the cooking while you situate yourself back at your desk. 

since ive decided to live off crappy ramen for a while, i decided to “spice” things up by getting this fancier “exotic” ramen from a korean grocery store. 

i probably should have already predicted this from the outset, given that i got this at a korean grocery store…but these noodles were SPICY! 

i am only so miffed because i did in fact carefully read the ingredients prior to purchasing this project, which claim that the soup base is made up of “salt, l-glutamate, sugar, garlic, soy sauce” and nothing more.  do those five non-spicy ingredients together produce a spicy, red-peppery substance?  if so, wow. 

if not, then ughh…i dont know if i should trust imported processed food products that blatantly lie in their ingredients lists.

AND…there were also little spongey brown things floating around in there, which I suppose are NOT the “dried welsh onion, dried carrot, dried seaweed” ingredients listed for the dried veggies.  they were, to my best guess, either bits of soy protein or bits of rehydrated processed meat.  gr8.

 

i then realized there were two additional ingredients listed in the spanish version of the soup base ingredients.  sooo…if you speak spanish, then these cup noodles contain beef flavoring and ginger.  but no matter if the consumer is spanish or english speaking, they are still unexplainably spicy.

 

 

is this legal?

 

will i now die from melamine poisoning? 😦

lunch review: microwaveable “homestyle japanese noodles”

Maruchan Chicken Flavor Yakisoba. 

“homestyle japanese noodles”, as the package boasts.

got it “on sale” for $1.25 at dominick’s.  like most items purchased from dominick’s, i think i paid way too much for it.  it tastes nothing like the yakisoba that ive had in japan…but it does taste a lot like the ramen that ive had in america.  while im a little bit disappointed that it doesn’t taste the way i expected, i am, at the same time, a huge fan of such ramen…so i found this lunch to be delicious nevertheless. 

but what compensates for the extra $1.15 in cost? 

a microwavable container and a higher-class packet of dehydrated cabbage, carrots and corn…that’s what.

lunch review: lo-cal soup.

Campbell’s Select Harvest Light Italian-Style Vegetable Soup.

canned barf. 

okay, to be more descriptive: it has the consistency and taste of water mixed with flour.  this soup also allegedly contains carrots, zucchini, celery, green beans and garbanzo beans, but all i found afloat in this can of processed terribleness were scarcely-identifiable little pieces of mush.  yep, canned barf.

just the fact that they couldn’t even name it “minestrone” should have been a giveaway that this was gonna be bad.