Coffee Pot Ramen
 

Think back to your college days and remember some of the "meals" you used to eat back then. Do you still eat that way, sometimes? Peanut butter on a tortilla sure didn't seem right to me, but when I replied to questions of what it was with "dinner", I didn't get that many strange looks. And that model meal of nutrition was prepared, and eaten with delight I might note, yesterday.

And I haven't lived in a dorm for years.

Alright, so there wasn't any food in the house and the nearby grocery stores were all closed. Did you expect me to eat late night fast food? What's open at those hours, anyways, Wendy's and Taco Bell? Mm-mmm! Suddenly, that makes it seem like an okay thing to do because what I did was healthy. Right?

Right.

Share your worst frugal meals. You know you still do it. You can even claim it was out of necessity and I'm sure no one will blame you then. Women, of course, never eat as badly as guys do, so I don't expect any stories from the females of The Cellar.

"Ramen and tobasco? Made in the coffee pot? What the hell is that?"
"Breakfast."

Warm beer and a twinkie.

How do you mean "worst"?

For a while in college I lived on Pop-Tarts and IBC Cream Soda. I wouldn't go so far as to say it was healthy, but I enjoyed it.

How do you mean "worst"?

Those kitchen concoctions that are created when there is simply not enough food in the kitchen to make something reasonable, either through lack of money, time, etc.

Pop Tarts always had way too much sugar in them for me. That, combined with IBC, would have made my head explode. Mmm... delicious.

A-1, it should be noted, works on steaks and nothing else. Trust me. :dead:

Rice with ketchup.

And you're right, most women won't sink to the depths that desperate men do with regard to food.

One guy I dated described a time at which he thought it was perfectly rational to have oatmeal with onions. Both started with "O" and it was around dinner time. Were it breakfast, he said, he wouldn't have added the onions (He has a PhD in computer science, which pretty much explains everything).

I've lived on bread and coffee for a week. Just straight white bread, rip a lump off the loaf.

I have a friend who adds peanut butter to his ramen noodles. He alternatively will add a slice of American cheese on occasion.

I used to mix black beans, Rotel (both straight from the can,) and cheddar cheese.

I once ate a Vegemite sandwich. Choked down two bites, then threw it away. Never again, I tell you!

I know this isn't exactly anything too desperate, but ...

Kroger used to sell boxes of 48 frozen corn dogs for something around $5 ... my roommate and I bought 3 or 4 at a time and ate them day and night. You would think they would get disgusting after a while, but no, once you have one you can't stop. Fantastic.

My daughter loves the soba and tahini version of this 'dish'. We call it peanut butter noodles...

yeah, and you like wicked spicy dillpickles with peanut butter slathered on them. it's actually quite good!

Actually a great cold noodle dish that my mom makes sometimes ... basically peanut butter and soy sauce over noodles with whatever you want in them. Must mix cold to get that gooey sauce coating, otherwise the soy sauce runs off and you just have peanut buttery noodles. Like a demented version of pad thai.

Rice, milk, and sugar. I was surprised to find that other people know this as well. Has to be day-old rice from the fridge, too. Kind of like a make-shift cereal and it is surprisingly good.

Add heat and that's Rice Pudding.

Omellettes, nachos, canned tuna in mac n cheese.

Instant mashed potatoes and frozen veggies. (I can't take credit for this one. It's actually slang-cooking, but it's pretty good. really. and i'm not just saying that.)

Two packets of beef flavored ramen in a bowl, heated with preshredded cheddar and the mortal remains of about 6 different kinds of BBQ sauce from nearly empty bottles. Then add the last of the bacon bits on top. THAT was from one evening (long after dorm days were over even) where I just didn't feel like going to the store. Though, while in a dorm, I once survived nearly 2 weeks on nothing but juice and softbread iced cookies.

Instant mashed potatoes and frozen veggies. (I can't take credit for this one. It's actually slang-cooking, but it's pretty good. really. and i'm not just saying that.)

My roommate survives on this and I've had it before. Not bad at all!

Two packets of beef flavored ramen in a bowl, heated with preshredded cheddar and the mortal remains of about 6 different kinds of BBQ sauce from nearly empty bottles. Then add the last of the bacon bits on top.

Ho. Lee. Shit. :vomit:

Cyber Wolf, that's pretty damn vile.

That's what my roomie said too. :D And I had it alllll to myself :yum:

My old college roomate used to pan fry baloney (balogna?). Maybe it was just me but I thought that was the most vile smell on planet earth.

Yeah, that's foul. My husband eats fried balogna and sometimes even feeds it to the kids. Whenit curls up around the edges and puffs up in the middle they like to decorate them like a sombrero with a squirt mustard bottle. Mexican Balogna Hats. Puke.

The trick is to cut the bologna in one spotto the middle. Then it doesnt curl, but ends up looking like Pac-man. NOT that I would ever condone eating that crap, fried or not.

I think the worst I ever did as far as "college-guy" food was just eating the ramen brick raw when I was in a hurry. I never found it that hard to come up with decent meals, even on a shoestring budget. Sure, it's not stuff I would serve to impress a girl, but it certainly beats barbecue sauce stew. :D

Gotta friend who eats ramen bricks straight like potato chips. He's currently freelancing and not getting much business so being able to buy 50 packets of ramen with $5 is pretty nice. Of course, he also eats onions like apples, so... :yelsick:

i was a bartender at a high end microbrewery - i very rarely paid for a meal anywhere i went. all of us that worked in the restaurants and bars in the area were like family. your money is worthless when you have friends like that.

The trick is to cut the bologna in one spotto the middle. Then it doesnt curl, but ends up looking like Pac-man.

Can anyone post a picture of this? It sounds... interesting. :yelsick:

Google image search turns up nothing, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna bring the vile stuff into my house to take a pic. :p

Google image search turns up nothing, and I'll be damned if I'm gonna bring the vile stuff into my house to take a pic.

I sense an experiment coming up. Fried bologna? I haven't eaten the normal kind since I was really young and maybe its time to give it another try just for old time's sake. I bet the kind in the pan is just like Steak-ums. Mm-mmm! Pile some onions on, some cheese... Dad's favorite was chipped ham in a pan drenched in ketchup. Oog.

I had a number of friends that began mixing Nestle's Quick (the powder) in water when they didn't have any milk, then swore up and down that it was the best stuff, ever. As for ramen, I actually kind of miss it. If they didn't cook the damn noodles in palm oil, I'd probably eat the stuff a lot more often. And the peanut butter noodles recipie sounds like a good idea!

Fried bologna is a Southern thing...I've had it many times and got a taste for it in the Navy. I make sandwiches out of it, with melted cheese and catsup (ketchup?) on toasted white bread. Not bad, but the smell IS kinda funky.

I've heard it's a southern thing, but the only times I've ever seen people actually eat the shit is when I lived in upstate NY. Everyone up there ate it... and talked about it like it was a delicacy. We had to move... :dead:

I briefly had a college roommate whose mother was a little goofy, in a Mrs. Cleaver kind of way ... she made some concoction that involved grinding up the bologna (Oscar Mayer only, it was the "best kind") in a meatgrinder, adding a bit of mayo and relish, and then making a sandwich out of it, usually on a hamburger bun.

Thank goodness they didn't try to cook it. I forget whether she called it bologna salad or deviled bologna. I've deliberately blocked this bit out. Or it could be one of the memories that I lost to the weed.

My mother used to insist that we had PLENTY to eat--as long as it included: Mayo=, bread, relish and leftover rice. Livin' large! One night she prepared pickled lima beans. We knew we wanted a new mother by then.

I've found that the key to eating cheap here is Aldi. That's 80% of the secret.

With about 20 bucks a week I can eat 3 "meals" a day by buying their cheap but untasty food.

Most everything costs a buck, tomato sauce, potatoes, cereal, saltines, ect.
The bread is actually a great deal because it only costs $.79 and people buy it up fast, so it's always fresh.

So, at 20 bucks a week, you're looking at about a buck a meal. This is actually pretty easy.The hard part is seeing someone eating *real* food knowing you only have the Aldi - I'm broke as a motherfucker food.

Back when I had a real job...income....life, I'd regularly get together with friends for lunch. That doesnt happen much anymore, although there is still the occassional old pal that offers to buy lunch. When eating something other than Aldi cheapass food I eat like a fucking wild animal. Like the dog that doesnt even taste the burger or steak you toss him. That tends to scare or embarass people, so I dont get many offers any more. :biggrin:

People that say they go hungry nowdays dont get a lot of sympathy from me. If they were to say they hadnt had a slice of pizza or a burger in ages, then I might be sympathetic. Food is cheap in this country. Food you look forward to eating is not.

My dad swears by all that's holy that years ago before I was born, and times were lean, that my mom used to make balogna salad. My parents are fairly well-off now, but my mom was raised poor, and is embarrassed by the mention of anything that might make her appear less than white-bread. I tend to believe she made it, but my dad was likely the one who ate it.

An engineer who worked for my dad, during his bachelor years, used to make balogna soup - just balogna boiled in water. Mmm - mmm good. He also made tomato soup using ketchup packets and hot water.

Did that..got grossed out when I found out what was causing some rattling late one night. (roaches were chewing through cardboard grocery bags and plastic bread bags. I killed some only to notice that the other roaches were carrying off the dead one for food. Sort of the roach version of Soylent Green)

Reminds me of when we used to make soup biscuits (I'm not that nostalgic, this is only last semester). Run warm water over the brick o' noodles until softened, but still firm, then take the packet of flavoring and sprinkle it over the noodles, and eat it like a biscuit. Actually quite tasty and better than boiling water when your roommate spilled *something* in the microwave that makes everything taste like goat ass.

Also, fried bologna may smell like boiling piss, but it's actually quite tasty. Microwaved salami is better, though.

My gramma made this stuff for my mother and aunt - in our family, it's called "monkey meat".

I'll NEVER eat it.
:dead:

I never really had to do something Fear Factor-ish like all that, to be honest. I was always the resourceful one of the group - especially to my friends that live off-campus. They'd have the "coffee pot ramen" stories, then be sitting outside my dorm saying that they're hungry. Someone'd say "Mac & Cheese", someone else "ramen", I'd be the one going "Let's see what I have in stock...I got a few chicken sandwiches, some cheeseburgers, some meatballs, pizza, country-fried steak...", all boosted from the cafeteria, all sealed away in wonton soup containers from the Chinese place. It's not great food, but appearance goes a long way.

I'd be the guy in the army that could scrounge up anything and everything while out in the field, I'm convinced of this. That's if I, you know, didn't have that whole family tradition of not being shot to uphold.

For a while my roommates and I were big into $1 microwave sandwiches from QuikTrip ... god I miss those things ... but they had a great variety. BBQ pork sandwich, bacon double cheeseburger, chicken with ham and swiss, twin chili dogs ... and only a buck a pop! Pretty big sandwiches too.

Only something so delicious, so beautiful could resurrect The Coffee Pot Ramen thread.

White Castle Foods presents: Breakfast Surprise

...probably followed by "Lunch Horrors", I assume.

That certainly is surprising.

If I remember my White Castle Math properly, that's one serving, right?

Actually, if you like White Castles, that sounds pretty good--all cheesy--mmmmMM! But, I hate White Castles. They taste weird.

Ew - I think you taste weird.

White Castle rocks. I had to pass on the weekly lunch trip there today, though - tummy not feeling too great after two slices of pizza at midnight last night. :dead:

My aunt calls them belly-bombers.

Though I love them, that surprise thing kinda has me leery.

There's no White Castles around Colorado. :( I wonder if the frozen thingies are comparable...

They're actually not too bad. While the ones I bought were from the restaurant, I doubt they're much different than the ice-caked ones you get at the local grocery.

The trick is to steam them, or cover them in wax paper or something in the microwave to keep the moisture in. Otherwise they get kinda ... oily and soggy.

I'm gonna have to try them, then. :yum:

Oh no - my life is full weird coincidences. I just walked in the door from work and found a belated birthday present from two friends in the mail.

Good thing they are what they are, because I nearly pissed myself when I saw them.

(These accompany the original present given on my actual birthday night, which were a pair of briefs identical to the zebra-print ones Owen Wilson pulls out of his ass during the walk-off scene in Zoolander.)

my husband makes ramen with eggs (like egg-drop soup) and shredded cheese with hot (spicy) banana peppers and green pimento stuffed olives and lots of garlic.

When I'm feeling adventurous I'll have a bite.

Then I'll remember why I don't ask him to cook.

Had ramen and eggs and canned spinach back in the day, and it took about 5 minutes to prepare together and considerably less than that to come back up.

I actually printed off a nice Ramen recipe called Ramen Shrimp Pouch from FoodTV last night. I ran across it while fact-checking one of my posts here.

My only problem is that I don't like mushrooms and don't have any Mirin (sweet Japanese wine).


Off-topic, if anyone wants to try this recipe for Stone Fruit Pouches at the next Plastic Forks, I'll try it if someone helps me with the ingredients.