Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: THURSDAY, August 25, 1994                   TAG: 9410010030
SECTION: EXTRA                    PAGE: 1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: BETH MACY
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

SURVIVING RAMEN NOODLES 101 WAS A LESSON FOR LIFE

For the first time ever, I had to fend for myself, spatula in hand. The familiar whir of my mom's electric mashed-potato mixer was 100 miles away, and I couldn't afford to replace it with the colorful coupon booklet known as the Campus Meal Plan (motto: ``It may taste like paste, but hey, at least you didn't have to fix it'').

Luckily my two roommates were seasoned veterans of the off-campus meal scene. We piled into my Bug and headed to Food Town, where they loaded up my cart with the food that would sustain me for four semesters.

Ramen noodles. Cheaper than pizza and less complicated than boxed macaroni and cheese, they became the mainstay of my college-student diet.

You remember them: The crinkly packet with the Oodles of Noodles logo on the front. The brick of dehydrated squiggles inside. The tiny tin-foil square of crystal ``flavorings'' that came in beef, chicken, seafood and vegetable.

The food I would grow to love in college, despise for the few years following and then appreciate again with the same nostalgic fondness I have when I hear an old Neil Young song on the radio:

I still love it - but not enough to replace my worn-out records with CDs, or bring my dusty turntable up from the basement.

When I think of Ramen noodles, I think of the Neil Young album ``Decade,'' the all-nighters spent studying or partying or both, the slumlord apartment with the old gas stove - the kind you had to light with a match, listening carefully for the poof.

When I think of Ramen noodles, I think of other things I used to love, but couldn't endure again - the '71 Bug with no running boards, the slumlord apartment with no insulation, the boyfriends with no redeeming qualities.

I remember the endless debates with my roommates over proper Ramen procedure:

To drain (and have straight noodles) or not to drain (and have soup)?

To add the full flavor packet (and the MSG and the fat) or to go the diet route and add just half?

To go gourmet by adding peas, tuna fish, creamed corn, (insert other cheap canned or frozen food here), or to be purists and serve them up straight?

To break up the brick before submerging it in water, or to wait till it's partially cooked and soft?

A story problem: If three young women splitting a $250-a-month apartment pay $83.33 each in monthly rent (except for the alternating tenant who pays $83.34), how do you split the cost of 30 packs of Ramen noodles - priced at five packs for $1? And what happens when one roommate eats 12 packs a week instead of her allotted 10?

Ramens teach you to feed yourself at the most basic level. As you build kitchen confidence, they also teach you to experiment, creating such favorites as the Ramen, salsa and cheddar-cheese combo (noodles, drained; flavor-packet quantity, one-half).

And much later, after an indeterminate number of packs, you reach the Ramen Saturation Point, at which time the mere sound of those crinkling little packs will cause you to retch.

Dietetically speaking, you are grown up. Your epicurean adolescence is over.

Oh, you can relapse - say, if you're really broke, or if you want to take your taste buds down that memory lane of starch and salt.

But once you've passed through that tunnel of deliciously bad taste, it's never quite the same.

Think about it, college students, as you're packing up your hot-pots and trudging back to school. These are the best years of your lives.

It's all downhill from Ramens, trust me. You have to start counting your fat content and worrying about cholesterol and lining up behind salad-bar sneeze guards to get your food-pyramid allowances of fresh fruits and vegetables, and it's just not as much fun.

Luckily, you do have the transitional phase to look forward to. It starts when you get your first job and ends with your first pay raise:

The Taco Bell drive-through.

Beth Macy, a features department staff writer and Thursday columnist, recommends the book, ``101 Ways to Make Ramen Noodles'' (C&G Publishing, $9.95), by Toni Patrick. Best recipes: Beer Ramen and Double Chocolate Ramen Pie.