Ramen Noodles
Ramen noodles are a popular snack food. Many people eat them without cooking them as a crunchy snack.
I began doing this during one of my pregnancies because I was having a rough time and saltine crackers were not plain enough but uncooked crunchy ramen noodles were. It's safe to eat them without cooking because they are already thoroughly cooked.
I have successfully made ramen noodle soup (the kind that comes in a paper cup) by adding gravy drippings from steak from a small George Foreman Grill. Yes, the noodles got soft even though they never were made all that hot -- i.e. at no point were they in boiling hot liquid.
It did take something like twenty or thirty minutes, but that may have been entirely about waiting for enough gravy to accumulate to adequately cover the noodles and NOT per se how long it took for the noodles to get soft once submerged.
This implies that it may be possible to make ramen soup with just warm tap water and some patience if you need to make lunch under circumstances where warm tap water is available but cooking facilities are not. It also is potentially a safe way for even a fairly young child to make soup for themselves with no risk of scalding themselves.
I suggest you TEST this hypothesis BEFORE you need a cold prep lunch and see if you are okay with eating cold-prep ramen soup. It may work but you may hate it.
It also means you can have noodles as a side dish with steak cooked on a George Foreman Grill without a lot of hassle. You don't need to also boil water separately to make noodles to go with your steak.
Some people do not have full-service kitchens at home but can have appliances, like a George Foreman Grill. If you have limited kitchen facilities at home, shelf-stable noodles "cooked" with warm tap water or gravy drippings may be a great way to add some variety to your diet within the constraints of what you are working with.
I never added nutritional yeast and probably began leaving out the soy sauce at some point, but kept most or all of the spices. I likely also halved the recipe or something because I was cooking this only for me.
Diet for a Small Planet is promoted as a vegetarian cookbook, but it's really half political tome promoting vegetarianism as a solution to world hunger and such long before such ideas were cool. The author later wrote a preface to a vegetarian cookbook written by a relative of hers called Recipes for a Small Planet.
In that preface, she said she regretted making vegetarianism sound hard, like you really need to worry a LOT about enriching foods with things like nutritional yeast. You really don't.
I'm not a fan of veganism. I have my doubts that it makes sense for people. But humans have been successfully eating vegetarian (or MOSTLY vegetarian) diets for thousands of years. Traditional recipes tend to contain the right ratio of foods to get you enough protein. You really don't need to fret about that (unless you have some kind of weird health issue complicating things).
You DO need to worry about getting enough B vitamins, which mostly come from meats/animal products. This is why I have my doubts that veganism really makes sense. But eating a MOSTLY vegetarian diet is perfectly healthy and does NOT have to involve jumping through hoops and fretting about how much protein you are getting.
The other issue with veganism (as a political position) that concerns me is that it is hostile to the rights of Indigenous peoples to eat their traditional diets and pursue their traditional lifestyles, which are sustainable as practiced by such peoples because they are careful to use the ENTIRE animal and waste nothing. Especially in places like Alaska, where it's not really feasible to be vegan (it's hard to grow vegetables that far north and very expensive to import them), this can be a real sore point for Natives.
I began doing this during one of my pregnancies because I was having a rough time and saltine crackers were not plain enough but uncooked crunchy ramen noodles were. It's safe to eat them without cooking because they are already thoroughly cooked.
I have successfully made ramen noodle soup (the kind that comes in a paper cup) by adding gravy drippings from steak from a small George Foreman Grill. Yes, the noodles got soft even though they never were made all that hot -- i.e. at no point were they in boiling hot liquid.
It did take something like twenty or thirty minutes, but that may have been entirely about waiting for enough gravy to accumulate to adequately cover the noodles and NOT per se how long it took for the noodles to get soft once submerged.
This implies that it may be possible to make ramen soup with just warm tap water and some patience if you need to make lunch under circumstances where warm tap water is available but cooking facilities are not. It also is potentially a safe way for even a fairly young child to make soup for themselves with no risk of scalding themselves.
I suggest you TEST this hypothesis BEFORE you need a cold prep lunch and see if you are okay with eating cold-prep ramen soup. It may work but you may hate it.
Since originally writing this post, I have made ramen with cold or warm tap water. It does work, though I will say tap water can be sketchy, so you may want to use filtered water or bottled water instead.Since this is an Asian dish, I will suggest that you could potentially pair it with cold tofu to round out a cold prep lunch. I used to buy shelf-stable boxes of tofu that only had to be refrigerated if I used half the package in a dish. Cold tofu is a traditional Asian meal by itself. It doesn't actually need to be spiced and fried to be eaten, though it's really yummy if you spice it, fry it and serve with rice.
It also means you can have noodles as a side dish with steak cooked on a George Foreman Grill without a lot of hassle. You don't need to also boil water separately to make noodles to go with your steak.
Some people do not have full-service kitchens at home but can have appliances, like a George Foreman Grill. If you have limited kitchen facilities at home, shelf-stable noodles "cooked" with warm tap water or gravy drippings may be a great way to add some variety to your diet within the constraints of what you are working with.
Footnote
I got my recipe for spiced, fried tofu from Diet for a Small Planet, though I modified it. Here is an online copy of it.I never added nutritional yeast and probably began leaving out the soy sauce at some point, but kept most or all of the spices. I likely also halved the recipe or something because I was cooking this only for me.
Diet for a Small Planet is promoted as a vegetarian cookbook, but it's really half political tome promoting vegetarianism as a solution to world hunger and such long before such ideas were cool. The author later wrote a preface to a vegetarian cookbook written by a relative of hers called Recipes for a Small Planet.
In that preface, she said she regretted making vegetarianism sound hard, like you really need to worry a LOT about enriching foods with things like nutritional yeast. You really don't.
I'm not a fan of veganism. I have my doubts that it makes sense for people. But humans have been successfully eating vegetarian (or MOSTLY vegetarian) diets for thousands of years. Traditional recipes tend to contain the right ratio of foods to get you enough protein. You really don't need to fret about that (unless you have some kind of weird health issue complicating things).
You DO need to worry about getting enough B vitamins, which mostly come from meats/animal products. This is why I have my doubts that veganism really makes sense. But eating a MOSTLY vegetarian diet is perfectly healthy and does NOT have to involve jumping through hoops and fretting about how much protein you are getting.
The other issue with veganism (as a political position) that concerns me is that it is hostile to the rights of Indigenous peoples to eat their traditional diets and pursue their traditional lifestyles, which are sustainable as practiced by such peoples because they are careful to use the ENTIRE animal and waste nothing. Especially in places like Alaska, where it's not really feasible to be vegan (it's hard to grow vegetables that far north and very expensive to import them), this can be a real sore point for Natives.
