Survival Sunday 247: More Noodz

In Which I Try More Umai Crate Noodles

So, you know how adding stuff to noodles usually means good things? Uh.... unfortunately that didn't work out very well this time :(

Left to right: Healthy ramen, Tanuki Soba, and Canadian Bacon

We've never had too much luck with the health food ramen with the guy on the package - it's usually pretty bland. Tanuki soba, on the other hand, is usually really good! I mean, it's soba, so what's not to love?

And this kind had both crunchy puffs and fried seaweed! Score!

It was easy enough to prepare the soba, since that's just an "add hot water and let sit" kind of cup. I was a little annoyed that you can't see the fill line on this one, so I probably added a tiny bit too much water. Also this is maybe the second or third time we've received this kind of Tanuki Soba alone, so... not the most adventurous of Umai adventures...

I set about 2.5 cups of water to boil in a pan on the stove, ladling out enough to cook the Tanuki once it was hot enough. Then I set to work with prepping the healthy ramen so that it absolutely wasn't. My partner tore up the Canadian bacon and set it marinating in spicy sesame oil and the last of our soy sauce.

A simple marinade but one that smelled incredible!

Then I cracked some eggs into the water with the noodles and let those cook before dumping in the Canadian bacon. I should've added in the marinade, but hindsight is 2020...

The noodles cooked up fine, and I added in the flavor packet, but... it didn't really smell like much of anything.

This should have alerted me to the coming meal.

The flavor packet in any ramen should smell like something, but this one was just... vaguely sweet/salty smelling. It should have been strong enough to smell without stuffing my nose into the foil packet.

Sadly, even spicy curry, ramen pepper, and garlic powder could not save this ramen :(

The healthy ramen was, without a doubt, the most disappointing ramen I've had that didn't come from Wal-Mart.

It had absolutely no flavor, the noodles were limp (despite cooking for less time then they should have!), and the broth was basically taupe-colored water. We had to add salt.

At least the eggs were fantastic, though! Possibly the best eggs I've ever scrambled into ramen!

As for the Tanuki Soba? It was fine.

The Tanuki soba still had that nice buckwheat flavor with a dashi that, while not the strongest, was still flavorful and pretty decent. And the veggies were really pleasant, too!

So basically that was a bit of a flop of a meal :( That's too bad, since I was looking forward to the flavors.

As a consolation for the middling-to-disappointing fare from this blog, here's a picture of my cat in full snuggle-drunk blep mode:

yeaaaaaaaah, them's good tummy rubs....

Go Enjoy Something!
FC