2-minute love

If my mate Grant sees this title he will probably think I am going to write about his exploits in the old Pit-O-Love with the ladies and more specifically the time he did it twice in a row.
But I would never use a public forum like this to embarrass a close friend.
I'm talking about a different kind of love. 2-minute noodle love. I was reminded of my love affair with 2-minute noodles about 2.30 this morning. Chicken flavour. That’s all we seem to have in our house. Kirsty buys them in packs of 5. Perhaps she isn’t aware of the plethora of other flavours that this magical meal comes in. At first it was just chicken and beef. But in much the same way that Metallica branched out musically and started performing with orchestras, the 2-minute noodle men worked to expand their flavour repertoire. Chicken & Corn, Tomato and my favourite. Fried Onion. I suspect fried onion was a customer suggestion. Probably thought up by a drunk guy at 2.30 in the morning in his kitchen… actually, come to think of it, it could have been me.
2-minute noodles are just interactive enough to give you the illusion you are preparing something to eat, as opposed to opening it. All you have to do is add the noodles to boiling water and stir in the sachet. But even that can be a stretch at 2.30. As I inhaled my noodles in the kitchen I thought was trying the new Wallpaper Paste flavour. Turns out I had forgotten to add the flavour sachet. The versatility of this fantastic foodstuff is that you can just stir it in as you eat.
My mate Jeremy was joining me in my early morning nosh up, so I was preparing 2 lots of 2-minute noodles. I’ve never prepared in bulk before but here’s something you might not have realised. When you are making 2 lots of 2-minute noodles you don’t have to cook them for 4 minutes BUT, you do need twice as much water. As Kirsty was kind enough to point out when I woke up this morning. Kirsty is hoping this new knowledge will help me avoid leaving a pot with a blackened layer of noodles on the bottom in the sink.
Did you know there is no nutritional value in 2-minute noodles? I don’t care. The interactive experience has huge educational value, so for me, 2 minute noodles feed the soul and at the same time happen to fill the space in your stomach that the hours of drinking couldn’t quite reach. Genius.

The 2-minute noodle conspiracy

I remember when 2-minute noodles hit the streets in New Zealand in the 80’s. Literally. Maggi put them in letterboxes in my neighborhood. That was one of the perks of living in a middle class ghetto like Pakuranga. People were always sticking stuff in your letterbox for your mum or dad to try. Mostly mum. We got a lot of fabric softener. Although they’re completely lacking in nutritional value, 2-minute noodles tick 2 of the more important food group boxes. They’re cheap and fast. But have you ever wondered why they are still 2-minute noodles? Are you telling me that over the last 25 years they haven’t developed the technology to shave a few seconds off the preparation time? Look at the 100 meters record since the 80’s? Now I’m not saying they should put steroids in the noodles but I cant believe in this modern, time poor age, that the two-minute noodle industries resources haven’t been focused on reducing the time factor. Or have they?
Rumor has it that a backyard inventor came up with a simple way of turning 2 minute noodles into 1 minute noodles. What happened to this new noodle? It was bought by one of the big 2-minute noodle manufacturers and hidden away. Why? Because the 2-minute noodle magnates want to keep you dependant on their product and avoid the costly expense of changing all the packaging from 2-minute noodles to 1-minute noodles. And they are banking on the fact that most of the people that reach for their product are drunk and don’t stop to think that they could be getting their noodles faster. But can we afford not to? We are all conscious of global warming these days. Think how much warming the pot on the stove with the water for the noodles is responsible for. Now imagine if we halved that? That’s right, 1 minute noodles could halve global warming instantly. When you realise that you understand we cant afford not to have 1-minute noodles in the kitchen.