A fairly new hobby of mine is looking at pictures on flickr.com, especially *food* pictures on flickr.com.  Is that a cliché?  A fat chick looking at pictures of food?  Anyway, one thing I have run across lately is pictures of ramen noodles.  I always thought ramen noodles were the worst of the worst.  Bad for you and eaten only by the desperate or by college students.  I know I ate my fair share in college but I haven’t had any in years.

As the country hick I grew up, I thought the only way to eat ramen noodles was to cook them in boiling water, add the noodles and seasoning pack and voila - haute cuisine.  Flickr has educated me.  Seems ramen is very popular in Asian cuisine.  And it isn’t always just a bowl of instant noodles and broth.  Often there are savory bits of meat and exotic (at least to me) veggies swimming in the broth. One thing I keep seeing over and over is ramen with egg, whether it is streamed in like in egg drop soup, poached or just a boiled egg placed in the ramen.  It fascinated me.

So I went scavenging at my local grocery store and bought some Choice Ramen, which is *healthier* ramen.  I made a package, added a dash of ginger, a dash of sesame oil and poached an egg in the broth.

This was tasty.  It made a nice quick filling lunch. If you don’t like soup or you don’t like ramen then I wouldn’t bother.  But I waxed nostalgic eating this dish remember the dirt poor days of college and trying to cook ramen noodles in a hot pot.  The egg was a nice touch.  Egg drop soup is a favorite of mine.

And even though Choice Ramen is more expensive than regular ramen it is still a very very cheap meal - even with an egg.  I got mine for 44 cents a package and an egg costs about 15 cents.  So that is 59 cents for a big bowl.  The one downside is there is a lot of sodium.  There is 480 g of sodium in 1 serving which the bag states as 1/2 a package.  HA!  Who are they kidding?  Who eats 1/2 a package of ramen?

Nutritional Information for the *whole* package is:

Calories: 280
Fat: 2 g
Carbs: 56 g
Fiber: 2g
Protein: 8 g

5 WW points (plus whatever you add, example: 2 points for an egg)