4/24/07

Fat Powder.

Over the past few months, I’ve been making a lazy foray into dietary meatlessness. Firstly, this development had to do with the haunting softness of the eyes of moocows. Don’t get me wrong, they’re ornery, petulant creatures, and they walk around like they own the joint. But something about the teary mammalian eyeball fosters in me a sense of fraternity that I could easily beat down, but at this point wouldn’t care to. So I did my best to stop eating the noble lowing savages (MOOOO!), and I gave up pigs, too, because even though pigs are nasty, evil creatures, even more petulant and ornery than cows, Christians are the only of the three Abrahamic religions that eat them. So I defer to Judaism and Islam in matters of swine, by merit of majority rules. (By that same logic, I break with the notion that people who blow up other people with bombs strapped to their stomachs will be met by scores of virgins in heaven).

Anyway, my brand of “ethical” eating (puh-lease) involved gluttonous consumption of dairy products, and a whole lot of assorted chicken parts, usually fried in dairy products such as butter, and then covered in other dairy products such as cheese. I think it would take an act of willpower I can’t muster and conviction I can’t foster to actually give up dairy products, even if, as Alec Baldwin’s stentorian baritone tells me in PETA’s ridiculous “Meet Your Meat” video, that by supporting the dairy industry I support the veal industry, which involves the blinding and bludgeoning of adorable bovine infants. But, fuck ‘em if they can’t take a cudgel. I gots to have my milk.

So, now that I’ve turned a blind eye to that festering moral sore, the next step, I figure, has got to involve chicken in some way. And this led me, just moments ago, to a tragic discovery.

I’ve been trying to count calories a bit lately, because I’m skinny, and I would rather not be so skinny. Anyhow, I reckon I’m at somewhere around 1,000 calories for today, thanks to the ambrosial Pistachio, that truly great device – the masterstroke, really, of the intelligent designer of this vast and dismal earth - along with a healthy dollop of sour cream. (But not combined with Pistachios. That would be stupid).

(New Rule: I will henceforth capitalize the word Pistachio as a gesture of reverence).

Anyway, I was thinking… why don’t I do what the jobless, that unwashed mass of hungry men, have done since 1958? Ahhh, 1958. Truly a watershed year in the history of gastronomy, for it was in this year that a man first fried some noodles, dehydrated said noodles, and put those same noodles in a shrinkwrapped baggie. Then, in a truly inspired coup de grace, he added a tiny silver packet stuffed with lyrical flavors in the form of sapid seasoning powder. He called it, in His infinite wisdom, ramen. (I’m pretty sure it was already called that, but I’m going for effect here).

Of course, there are many kinds of ramen. There is just plain ramen, and then there are chili ramen and vegetable ramen, shrimp ramen and beef ramen, pork ramen and all the rest. But there is only one true ramen, only one ramen that deserves the sacrosanct Capital Letters, and that is the ramen of Chicken Ramen.

Chicken. Ramen. Chicken. Fuck.

So I looked at the ingredients on the back of the package, since it wouldn’t be a huge stretch to assume that Chicken Ramen includes absolutely no trace of anything real, much less a chicken that used to be alive.

I was waylaid and devastated, walleyed and enervated to learn that, by my own newly implemented diet, I am forbidden from eating the flavor packet. The flavor packet, which is Excalibur to the noodles’ Arthur. The flavor packet, which is Joanie to the noodles’ Chachi. The flavor packet, which is Axl Rose to the noodles’ Slash.

Why you ask?

Because of two dastardly ingredients.

Chicken powder,

and chicken fat.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is where Chicken Ramen gets its name. Fat, and powder.

Fat Powder.

Fuck.

2 comments:

arstreeter said...

Look a chicken in the eye sometime. Pure reproachfulness.

Anonymous said...

Oriental style is mad good and vegetarian friendly.