A Journey

I love those 'cup of noodles' things. It's pretty amazing that you just have to boil some water and then pour it into the cup in order to enjoy a hot, serviceable meal quickly. You have to have a fork too, I suppose, but it remains a relatively contained food item to which you must add or do little. You can even have such flavors as shrimp. You might assume that it's merely a poor imitation of shrimp flavor, but that's not so. There's shrimp in there!

They're tiny, and have been dried forever, but they spring to succulent, flavorful life like sea monkeys once doused with hot water. While eating, I remark on the journey they have undergone to reach me. Some kind of shrimp farming operation cultivated them somewhere, or maybe they were even caught in the sea half a world away, where they enjoyed all the fruits of life that a shrimp is entitled to before being torn away and shipped off.

After being killed and slaughtered, they'd have been dried somewhere fairly near and boxed up for some big boat ride. After a series of cars and trains, they would have made it into a cop of likewise-dried noodles. Then began the true waiting. I've seen the noodle cups in vending machines. Might the ghost of the shrimp be waiting over the cup all of this time until its unfinished business is taken care of by whatever impatient, hungry person finally buys the thing?

Ultimately, the shrimp are a minor component to the cup o' noodles. The noodles are king. Even the peas and carrot bits probably amount to more of the cup's weight. You taste the flavoring powder more than any of those things, but it's the shrimp that really make the meal. It's them that put the whole thing over the top and trick you into thinking you have a real meal with meat in it on your hands. Shrimp are regarded as meat, right?