Build-your-own Ramen

My kids love it anytime I do a "build-your-own" because it means they control how many vegetables and how much meat goes on their plate. It also means that if cheese is involved, it will all be devoured.

Last night my first born said, "I want junk food tonight - I don't feel like having anything healthy." They he asked if they could have Top Ramen. Of course I took a little insult to that and made it a challenge. I said I would make them ramen and they'd love it. And they did.

To be on the up-and-up, I did use the packaged ramen noodles most of us starving college students lived on, but just the noodles, not the seasoning package. I'm not going to give you a recipe for this, it's really quite that simple, but I will tell you what I did.

I brought a pot of stock (I used chicken flavored Better Than Bullion) to a boil. While that was getting hot and steamy, I chopped some veggies real quick - whatever I found in the fridge that made sense...in this case, green beans (haricot vert - thin French green beans), bell peppers from our garden, some chopped garlic, and mushrooms. I heated a pan with a couple tablespoons of sesame oil and tossed all those vegetables in. In this case, I didn't even season the veggies since there was so much in the stock and I still wanted a fresh taste.

I cooked those vegetables for a few minutes just to get some color on them, but still crisp. The broth is boiling by this point, so I tossed all those noodles into that hot, steamy, chicken broth bath and let them start to soften up.

In the meantime, I chopped some green onion, cleaned the basil from the garden, thinly sliced up the bar-b-que'd chicken I made the night before, and pulled out some spinach and eggs. Everything got put into their own bowls and set on the counter. When the noodles were ready, I served them up in bowls and let each person take it from there. And because each one made it how they liked it, they all loved it.