Instant Noodles

No, I'm not talking about your member after a few glasses of whisky (har, har).


I'm sitting in a hotel on a Friday night because there's a gaping hole where the ceiling over my bed used to be. I have to be somewhere at 7:30am tomorrow morning, so I have an excuse for blogging on a Friday night (this post was withheld for a couple days, not that anyone notices). Long story short, I'm living in an overpriced semi-dump for the time being, and have little to do.


There's barely a kitchenette in here. There's a fridge and a microwave, which isn't so bad, but is a total rip for the rate. I stole some silverware from the continental breakfast the other morning, and have been subsisting on Lean Cuisines and plums for about a week. I've been keeping mostly to my vegetarian pledge, completely if you don't count fish as meat. For a whole week in a row now!

It was for this reason that I read the ingredients on the Maruchan Instant Lunch Chicken flavor noodles (emphasis mine). I thought it was just flavoring. Well.

About halfway down the billboard sized list of ingredients is this gem, "powdered cooked chicken". Um... what? I'm sorry, but just what in the hell is powdered cooked chicken? Besides the obvious...

I'm really curious about this process. They cooked chicken, then reduced it to powder? Why didn't they leave it as, I dunno, chicken? At least it's not powdered raw chicken, but still. I mean, dried chicken chunks or something I could sort of accept. But powdered chicken? How does one achieve that, exactly? What part of the chicken is so readily converted to granulated form?


I wouldn't eat this garbage even if I wasn't trying to go vegetarian. Blech. (by the way, the next ingredient is "chicken fat", no joke).

By contrast, this vanilla flavored soy pudding is sooooo delicious and satisfying...