Erstwhile Muse

Ramen Daze

Friday was the last day of the semester down at CCAD, but I was there for the last session of what I like to call my Mad Monarch pose, the one that had me seated at a table in nothing more than a cheesy plastic crown, holding an ass' jawbone—the jawbone of some sort of long faced herbivore at least—and staring down a loaf of rather crusty bread. This particular pose was the brainchild of Mrs. McCoy, the same instructor that brought out the bunny ears around Easter. Why she developed a rather odd headgear fixation I'm not sure; still, she was one of the better professors to work for, if nothing else than for the way she ran the model's break schedule. I was actually glad to have the jawbone at this point; the bread had become hard enough to kill, and I figured if it leapt up and attacked me I could go all Samson on it's starchy ass.

The end of classes, and therefore currently available contract model work, naturally has upsides and downsides. Not having to wear a heavy winter-weight terrycloth robe in a large open building with no air conditioning is definitely a perk, as is the amazingly cool portrait of myself I saved from being tossed out of the drying racks. I no longer have a daily impetus to ride my bike downtown, so I have to find new reasons to rouse myself outside into the ugly heathen temperatures of an Ohio summer and get some exercise, but that is a relatively easy task. At least I know that even with reduced physical activity I won't be in serious danger of gaining back all that weight I have lost since the beginning of the year; lack of definable regular income tends to alter one's diet somewhat.

Which brings us to our title dish: Ramen. Overly salted noodles have once again become a staple of my diet. Now as a long time connoisseur of the prepackaged, undoubtedly Americanized version of ramen noodles this is a rather easy dietary change to acclimatize; I'm familiar with many tricks to fold, mutilate and spindle the otherwise non-descript flavour variations of dirt cheap ramen packets. Usually with ramen this is the best overall strategy, go for the best noodle pack per dollar ratio possible—usually at least 10:1, otherwise you're paying too much—and alter to taste if need be. This is the reason I usually avoid the Maruchan brand, as they are always more expensive than other brands. Someone at the company realized this though, which is, I'm sure, why they have flavours that no other brand makes; if you can't beat them on price, beat them on selection. What do you know, every once in a while free market principles do make sense, as long as evil fuckheads aren't abusing them. Maruchan used to make one of my favorite flavours, Tomato Ramen. This was great, it could almost take the place of actual tomato sauce and pasta, and actually tasted different than your standard ramen flavours. Unfortunately I haven't seen this particular flavour available for over a year or more. Luckily for me however, they have designed a new flavour, Lime Shrimp, which has rapidly become my newest favorite for sodium and starch consumption. If you're among the types that eat ramen on a regular basis. I strongly suggest you try it out.

Postscript:

In doing some brief research for this post I came across Restaurant Hama, which apparently makes some halfway decent ramen. One of these days I shall have to make my way out there and try it for myself.

Labels: work