Imagine my smile when I learned that my fall back lunch of convenience,
ramen noodles with a handful of frozen vegetables, is really cutting edge
foodie worthy. Author Sarah Child has a book, Rah! Rah! Ramen , with over 50 recipes
to glam up the modest ramen noodle. While
aimed at college students, these aren’t the ordinary noodles I ate twice last
week. For more on the culinary creativity of Ms. Childs, and how others are
weighing in on the heightened acclaim of ramen, check out this story from
Minnesota Public Radio. ramen
My older daughter is a vegetarian, so when she is around, we seem
to always have those preformed veggie or soy patties or bean burgers from Bocca
or Morning Star on hand. She says they
taste fine, but for a cost of $1.00 a patty, on sale, it seems we should
be able to do better than fine. A thank you goes to Jack Monroe, who blogs in
the United Kingdom as A Girl Called Jack. a girl...
I’ll probably reference her frequently in future blogs, as an example of
someone who really has figured out purposeful living, and at a very young
age. She has adapted pantry shelves of uninspiring
canned staples into some visually stunning, and by her huge number and still
growing follower’s opinions, tasty low cost dishes. I modified her kidney bean burger to use my American cupboard staple of chili beans. Delicious!
While my youngest wasn't won over, my husband loved them as well, and even requested them to be made
again, which I did last night, since the kid was still on a church mission trip. Next time, I'll make a reserve batch; bye-bye frozen preformed patties,
which quite frankly, sort of left a weird smell lingering in the kitchen. I’m
feeling very mid-western foody chic right now.
ahh, the humble ramen
It's funny how tastes and activities born out of necessity can become a trend in themselves. But hey, nothing wrong with being sensible about money and food choices. And Jack Monroe is a wonderful woman, her writing about her dire poverty and the awful times she had trying to make her son health meals out of next to nothing is heartbreaking. She's a real example of someone whose career has emerged out of her own experience and necessity, rather than adopting some trend of frugality. And she is a feisty campaigner for people's rights to reasonable benefits and support. She's great! xxx
ReplyDeleteShe is about the same age as my older kids, and I only hope they have half her common sense, compassion, and moxy. I sometimes crave the bean burgers.
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