Robot Claw

Ramen 5: Chicken Forever!

March 23rd, 2021

More ramen; you know the drill by now…

Kusari Noodles Chicken Ramen (280 Calories, 3 g fat, 1440 mg sodium)

Surprisingly this UK import is on shelves at Walmart. KLS had one of these flavors on one of our holidays and given I’ve found cup noodle products to be of general high quality in the UK I was hopeful about this one. I prepared it as instructed and opened my mouth…

And it was awful! The uncooked noodles were weirdly long and plastic, and when cooked were fibrous and difficult to bite through. But this was nothing compared to the taste, which was of effluvia and regret. I only managed half a spoonful before pouring the broth down the sink and tossing the ‘noodles’ in the trash. An easy score of 0/10

Chef Woo’s Roast Chicken (330 Calories, 14 g fat, 1220 mg sodium)

Another chicken flavour from this overpriced brand that recently found its way into our local supermarket. If you read the last installment you’ll have learned that these ramens were notable only for their blandness, so my expectations weren’t high.

But it was different… in a very bad way. Weirdly brown noodles with the consistency of rotten flesh floated limply in a briney broth redolent of decay. The rehydrated vegetables added nothing at all to an experience that started at the bottom and quickly descended. I’ll never eat this again, and I shouldn’t have even eaten the spoonful I had today. Score: -10/10

Gefen Ramen Noodles (392 Calories, 17 g fat, 1337 mg sodium)

Luckily, after the previous two horrors, I had a stash of God’s Own Ramen to fall back on. Back in my third installment I gave the cup noodle version of this 10/10 but KLS has maintained this brick ramen version to be even superior. Could that be true?

Preparation is easy and the delicate white noodles seem the same as those in the cup. There’s only one flavor packet here (no veggies) but it’s easy to prepare and you’ll be eating in no time. And the taste… it’s just sublime. This is without question the best brick ramen in existence and it’s hard to imagine how it could be improved. Does it surpass the cup version? Only a supertaster could decide! Another easy 10/10!

Amazingly this is (still!) not the final ramen post. Watch this space in a month or so for the next installment 🙂

Posted in Blog, Food | Comments Closed

Introducing Loppi!

March 20th, 2021

Yesterday our family expanded by one when we adopted a new girl! Meet Loppi!

Loppi is about six months old. She was a stray that had been fed by an elderly gentleman who passed away earlier this year. When found she was the last of her litter, so she was probably lonely and confused.

This was in the state of Georgia, and in two short months she found herself rescued, spayed, dewormed, microchipped and sent interstate to a foster house about 90 minutes south of where we live. We ‘found’ her online, and yesterday went to collect her.

She’s very pretty, very small, and very, very interested in us. She’s also extremely nervous and shy and we’re being extra careful to do our best to calm her nerves.

Aside from her nerves everything seems fine. She’s eating and active and after less than a day seems happier to see us. A lot has changed for her in Loppi’s short life and it will take a while for her to understand the gravy train she has now boarded 🙂

As for Zoffy, she’s acting 100% normal. She must know Loppi is here – the endless meowing at night is impossible to miss! – but she’s hardly reacted. We’re told Loppi loves other cats, so I expect when we do release out of the bathroom Zoffy will be overjoyed to have a playmate as young and energetic as her!

I’m sure you’ll see more Loppi here in the weeks and months to come 🙂

Posted in Blog, Cats, Family | 1 Comment »

Crimes I Have Committed

March 11th, 2021

As we grow older we tend to spend more time in self-reflection and invariably our thoughts end up turning to the moments we gave in to temptation and ‘obtained’ items that were perhaps not ours for the taking. This post describes two such incidents in my life.

Operation Tuck Shop

This happened in 198X. Bernard, myself and two brothers of a certain family we were friends with were bushwhacking around the wilds of Kahibah. We stride through a sports field and came upon an old brick tuck shop at the edge of the car park. It was closed up since the field wasn’t being used, but it was one of those very old buildings with sturdy iron grates in place of doors and windows which allowed anyone to look inside.

And look we did, and to our astonishment we saw delicious vittles just sitting on a counter inside! These were lollies no doubt intended for sale during an event, but to us – young teenage lads – they were the devils own temptation. Alas we couldn’t open the door, and we weren’t the sorts who would consider breaking and entering. But there was no one around except us, and it seemed wasteful to simply ignore the lollies we could see only a few feet away.

At this point we noticed there was a sizable gap under the iron grated door and that one of our company – let’s call him Hurdy Gurdy Boy (HGB) – could fit underneath. I recall he was opposed to the idea but he was a) younger and b) smaller than us and therefore easily ~~coerced~~ persuaded.

So HGB squirmed under the grate like a criminal worm until he was inside, and then he hastily handed us vittles and – as I recall – even ice cream (!) through the grate! The three of us remaining outside stuffed our pockets and ran away gibbering in terror that we’d be caught and incarcerated! I seem to recall HGB shrieking from inside as we fled since he thought he was trapped, but he obviously extricated himself and caught up with us quickly.

We didn’t take much since we were worried about being caught; maybe only a few lolly bars and an ice cream each. And we ate them all quickly on the way home lest our parents find out. It was a small heist, but a successful one.

Operation Bingo

This was a few years before the previous incident. A friend of mine – let’s call him Bingo Boy (BB) – regularly hosted slumber parties at his (large) house at which a good amount of ‘the guys’ in my year would attend. We were all cool dudes, and spent the time in his (gigantic) pool, or playing darts or Atari 2600 or watching horror flicks on VHS.

I was good friends with BB, and more than once I went to bingo nights with him since his mum was one of the organizers. (As an aside this was held at Charlestown, not too far from the library, in a building that also contained the first RPG game shop I ever visited and eventually bought D&D at!) One of his mum’s responsibilities at Bingo was running the lolly shop, where drinks and lollies would be sold to gamblers for some extra cash.

At one of the slumber parties, BB just happened to mention to a room full of teenage boys that he knew where his mum stored the bingo lollies! They were ‘hidden’ in a high cupboard in a sort of storage room in their (massive) house. I think he told us this without considering the implications.

You can imagine what happened! The above image shows me in my purple with sky-blue-trim dungarees and matching flame-orange tank top (neither of which probably existed) commandeering full boxes of Mars Bars from the aforementioned ‘hidden’ closet. We found entire boxes of Wagon Wheels, Smarties, Snakes Alive and all sorts of other lollies. We had found the storage closet of our dreams!

There were maybe a dozen of us and we ate like demons. We weren’t caught during that stay, but eventually his mum discovered the theft, and BB got in a good deal of trouble for it since the lollies actually belonged to the church and she had to pay for replacements herself. Naturally the rest of us got off scot-free, and had a good laugh at his expense as teenage boys do!

So there you have it. Two confessions of incidents where crime did pay. Am I proud of these? No I’m not. But at the same time the guilt (if it ever existed) has long since been replaced by the happiness of these memories 🙂

Posted in Blog, Food, History | 2 Comments »

Pullip Time!

March 6th, 2021

KLS recently bought her second Pullip doll. “What’s that“, you ask? Time for some photos…

Here’s the first one she bought several years ago. Her name is Alice du Jardin and she was first released in 2012. She’s obviously inspired by Alice in Wonderland, and the text on the card that came with her makes that explicit.

Pullip dolls are hyper-accessorized collector toys for adults. They stand about a foot tall and as you can see have detailed clothing and lovely hair. The South Korean company that makes them releases a new doll every month and there’s well over 200 available now.

They’re slightly disturbing but also cute, and Kristin loves their clothes and hair. Alice has been on display for many years now in the room that has become Kristins work-from-home-office, and as an unbirthday gift to herself she bought a second Pullip:

Meet Midnight Velvet. She’s was also first released in 2012 and is the evil witch from the Snow White legend. Her headdress makes her about 6 inches taller than Alice, and the detail of her clothing is astonishing and possibly lost in these photos. (She has voluminous and detailed undergarments that aren’t even visible!)

The dolls are posable but obviously designed to be displayed standing since they include a stand. While the company is South Korean the dolls are most popular in Japan and a lot of the licensed ones are based on Japanese properties.

Oh, and they’re eyes move:

And yes, she’s got glittery makeup!

So now you know it’s not just me that buys crazy things! KLS has her own otaku interests as well. I asked her if she had any comment to add to this post and she said: “I’m not some creepy doll collector!” 🙂

Posted in Blog, Collecting, Otaku | 2 Comments »

Ramen 4: Chicken Boogaloo!

March 4th, 2021

You know the drill by now: more chicken ramen. Let’s go!

Maruchan Roast Chicken (290 Calories, 12 g fat, 1270 mg sodium)

This is a slight deviation from my rules, since we could debate whether ‘roast chicken’ is ‘chicken’, but I’m allowing it nonetheless. This product is extremely similar to the plain ‘chicken’ flavor of Maruchan cup noodle (reviewed in my second installment), which is to say it’s acceptably fine.

The only difference I could note was the inclusion of weird rubbery pieces of what I assume was reconstituted chicken loaf, which in my opinion added nothing and were actually somewhat unpleasant. Aside from this, nothing particularly outstanding here. I’d give it 6/10.

Mike’s Mighty Good Craft Ramen (210 Calories, 6 g fat, 780 mg sodium)

This is another hipster product from Whole Foods, only this time its not vegan. Even before opening it had similarities to the awfulness of McDougalls and as soon as I did open the top and saw the weird bundle of not-ramen and identical flavor packets I knew it was the same product in different packaging.

Or was it??? I followed the instructions exactly as I had done before but the noodles actually cooked correctly this time! So I added the flavor, stirred it up and shoved a loaded forkful into my mouth to find it was absolutely disgusting! The noodle consistency was of uncooked bread dough and the taste was like rotten flesh.

I hastily spat it out, cursing like a sailor, and vowed that if I ever ran into ‘Mike’ he would wish he was Dr McDougall after the punishment I would deliver to him. It’s hard to believe a chicken ramen could be worse than this: -100/10

Chef Woo’s Chicken Ramen Express (280 Calories, 12 g fat, 1160 mg sodium)

This just turned up in our local stores and I bought it eagerly since of course I had to review it. It seems to be a premium product due to its fabulously expensive (compared to most of the others I have reviewed) price of $2.28 a cup! So what’s it like?

In a word: it’s nothing. The noodles are fine, they cook perfectly well if you follow the instructions and the included veggies hydrate acceptably. But there is no taste at all! It’s like eating noodles and (a few) veggies in hot water. It (probably) gives sustenance, but no satisfaction.

I was actually wondering if there had been a manufacturing error, but KLS was eating a spicy version by the same manufacturer and said it was equally flavorless. It’s a nothing ramen therefore, with no reason to eat it. Only because it actually cooks as it should will I give it 2/10.

Believe it or not this won’t be the final error! I’ve still got at least a few more in the cupboards waiting to be tried and as always you’ll read about my thoughts when I get around to it 🙂