The boys start Vacation Bible School tonight, and Lea is coordinating snacks (in addition to doing a fantastic job with decorations all week!). So I have dinnertime to myself tonight. I can have anything I want, and I’m having a thoroughly ridiculous craving. I might have ramen for dinner.
It’s been 14 years or so since I ate ramen. When I moved out of my father’s house, I was making a little more than $12,000 a year at a bookstore. To say that the grocery budget tended toward the simple is an understatement. I was a lot skinnier then.
Mind, I never pretend that I truly struggled. Thankfully I never had to ask for money, but if I had ever been in imminent danger of being hungry or cold, Dad would have helped me. Plus, I still found the money for cigarettes (yeah, yeah), though that wasn’t nearly as expensive as it is now.
Nevertheless, after rent and keeping the heat on, I’d often find myself with $10 or so to eat on for a week. It was a slam-dunk to populate three dinner slots with ramen, for a grand total of 54¢. (Store brand ramen was 6/$1). If I was feeling rich, I’d split a can of mushroom pieces and stems between them, pushing the cost of three dinners to $1.49.
My income went up substantially when I started selling cars, and I was able to move up the food chain (though I stayed skinny; hustling around a car lot 60 hours a week will do that). It took some time to click over in my head, though. Initially, instead of upgrading my meal selection, I upgraded the add-ins. Creature of habit, blah blah blah. I was scooping a can of cocktail shrimp into the pot of ramen one night when the absurdity of such an act occurred to me. Heh.
So, as my success increased, ramen fell off my radar. But I’m stopping by Publix to get dinner on the way back from dropping the boys off tonight. If I were standing there right now, it would be ramen. Nostalgia? Salt craving? Who knows? I’ll have to see if the feeling is there in an hour and a half.
You might also like:
- Kicking the 20-year off…
Headed to the initial planning meeting for my 20-year high school reunion tonight. Hard to believe i… - Nathan’s sushi birthday dinner
Nathan wanted to have birthday dinner at I Love Sushi. (We just got one in Madison!) We packed up an… - Bo Williams, old man
The boys had their end-of-year awards program at school today. Half of their teachers were little gi… - Eating with the first grade
I surprised Nathan and had lunch with him at school today. First of all, God bless teachers and admi… - Dinner and a movie
Lea and I try to have a date every couple of months, but unfortunately there is often significant de…
Every now and then, I would kill for a Ramen cup. Target has a great brand of thai rice noodle ramen bowls. Considerably more than 18 cents, but they really are yummy!
Aw, I couldn’t stand it. I was there face to face with them, and it was just too depressing. (They’re 7/$1 now! That’s 15¢ each in 2008 dollars!)
A fine offering from California Pizza Kitchen got the nod instead.
Ooooh! California Pizza Kitchen is yummy! I like the white pizza variety – with the garlic and mushrooms? MMMMM!
We don’t do ramen – I went to college as an adult with an engineer fiancee, so I ate like a real person through my college years. We DO occasionally do the Rice-a-Roni thing – chicken flavored rice (and WAY too much salt) with a little chicken stirred in for good measure. Not too often, though; there’s only so much of that stuff you can stand before you start to get squirrelly from all the sodium…
Wouldn’t it be fun to have a “what I ate in college” potluck dinner? It would be mac and cheese, ramen, and tab.
Snickers and Dr. Pepper got me through college … in addition to the mac and cheese staple. =)
I finally acted on this just this morning. I had chicken ramen for breakfast. It was delicious.