Benefit Street Apartment :: Ramen Photo–Monthira Yodtiwong–iStockphoto
During the last few years of college and especially my final year, I ate a lot of instant ramen. To this day when I smell it, or see the packages stacked on store shelves, I can be transported to either my apartment between the giant hedges on South Black Street, or my late-nineteenth century studio that overlooked Providence. Those two apartments and years of overlapping memories still swirl when I’m in the grocery aisle, like the past, present and future are singular.
I remember buying a case worth of instant ramen at Star Market in Providence every few weeks. Then I road home, prepared dinner, turned on the radio and slurped my steaming bowl of noodles. Sometimes when it was raining or snowing outside and I looked out my huge windows while eating, it felt a little like that street scene from Blade Runner with Deckard at the noodle bar. After I finished, I was back to nursing my coffee, cigarettes and evaluating whatever was on the drafting table, on the bike to Market House, or a midnight shift painting in the Bank Building. Wherever I was, they weren’t just noodles, they were a lifestyle.
I didn’t eat as much ramen after I moved to Chicago. I don’t really remember what kind of food I made at home when I lived there, but I know I ate out a lot. Once I moved to Minneapolis I cooked for myself most of the time. Years later, after my wife and I were married, ramen found its way back into our rotation because she loves noodles too. Then our daughter was born, and she became a noodle fan as well. We ate a slightly better-quality instant ramen than when I was single, mostly because she pimped it with veges and meat, and a half-hard-boiled egg, so it was transformed into something much better.
A few years ago, though, she suggested we stop eating the packaged version entirely because there were too many additives in the tasty powder. Being averse to most lifestyle changes of any kind, I immediately became concerned and voiced significant resistance to her plan. She listened to me and then gently suggested I be open. So, she began to buy bulk dry noodles and then added everything like she usually did and prepared the broth from scratch. I was spoiled. However, unless she made ramen for us, or we got ramen take-out, I didn’t make it just for myself, because my issue was the same as it was in college. I’m impatient. I want to be eating it in five minutes and I’ll gladly sacrifice the quality to have it that fast. Food impatience might be a part of my ancestry, from when very distant relatives were starving in Scotland, or Germany, and had to eat almost anything they could find to survive that didn’t make them ill — occasional meat, grass, sticks and other unidentifiable stuff that was probably just dirt. That’s what they could find, and they needed to eat it immediately when they found it.
Then last fall, my wife moved to Florida to care for her mother. I held out for as long as I could, but at about the six-week mark, I caved, and went to our favorite Asian supermarket and bought a case of instant ramen for myself and a case for my daughter. At first, I felt disloyal and a little ashamed like I was having a ramen affair, so I kept it to myself. We talk on the phone daily though, sometimes more than once, so what she’s making for their meals on any given day is a frequent topic of conversation and what I’m eating comes up too. Eventually I couldn’t take it any longer and confessed that I was eating outlaw ramen at home again. She laughed. “That’s not all you’re eating though is it?” she asked quietly. “No, but it’s in heavy rotation.” We left it at that. What could she really say or do at that point anyway? There are over fifteen-hundred miles that separate us and I’m already blowing through my second case like an instant ramen time machine.
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“We’re noodle folk. Broth runs through our veins” :: Mr. Ping, Po’s Father – Kung-Fu Panda
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Songs :: Doin’ the Things That We Want To by Lou Reed, Catapult by REM, Love and Affection by Joan Armatrading, Without You by The Doobie Brothers, True to Life by Roxy Music, and Early Morning Riser by Pure Prairie League
© C. Davidson