ramen

It seems that in the US ramen is / are 2-minute noodles. Matt Fischer's Ramen Recipe Database is fantastic! It's almost the opposite end of the spectrum to the Cooking for Engineers site. The Ramen Database is not particularly attractive, but it has a wealth of sociological detail, some of the recipes being developed in jail, others in college. Interesting.

(I started researching ramen because on the NaNoWriMo discussion board there's a thread about snacks to have on hand during the writing process, and ramen came up time and again, with adjectives like "caucasian" ... which puzzled me greatly. I'm used to thinking of Japanese noodles when I see the word, but now I find that ramen came to Japan from China.)