{"id":24257,"date":"2015-10-27T16:58:36","date_gmt":"2015-10-27T20:58:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/?p=24257"},"modified":"2015-11-03T16:58:50","modified_gmt":"2015-11-03T21:58:50","slug":"making-cheeseless-childhood-ramen-grilled-cheese","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/developer83.wordpress-developer.us\/culturecheesemag\/making-cheeseless-childhood-ramen-grilled-cheese\/","title":{"rendered":"Making Up for My Cheeseless Childhood: Ramen Grilled Cheese"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a toddler, my body didn\u2019t really do dairy that well. My parents have told me the horror stories and kept our fridge stocked with lactose-free milk throughout my early childhood. All seemed well until, at five years old, I started complaining about stomach pain daily. In response, my doctor suggested I cut out all dairy all together. I still remember the hysterical sobbing that occurred when my dad told me I might not be able to eat macaroni and cheese again.<\/p>\n

After a long period of scraping the cheese off of pizza and substituting my favorite bagel-and-cream-cheese lunch for a PB&J, however, I was allowed to start slowly reintroducing dairy into my life. While large quantities of milk and ice cream should still be avoided, I was thrilled to find that cheese wasn\u2019t a trigger for any major issues.<\/p>\n

I can\u2019t remember for sure, but I\u2019m pretty certain the first thing I did after making this discovery was grab all the cheese I could find and fill my face with it. I\u2019ve been celebrating that way pretty consistently ever since. But now, I plan to take my celebrating to a whole new level. Through this blog series, I\u2019m going to relive those great, carefree, childhood glory days with the added glory of cheese. Every week, I\u2019ll try out a different kid-friendly, cheesy recipe and share my experience, ultimately declaring whether or not the meal was good enough to adequately make up for my cheeseless childhood.<\/p>\n

And I\u2019m not talking pizza bagels and homemade mac and cheese. To get back those cheesless days, I\u2019m going all out and preparing some of the wackiest dishes I can find. My hope is not only to fill my stomach and soul with cheese, but to provide recipes for fun, easy, and delicious meals to families can make together with their cheese-loving child.<\/p>\n

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As a kid, ramen was one of those foods that wasn\u2019t in the house often, but when it was, there was no stopping me. It was a favorite after-school snack, and I would beg my dad to buy more so I could take a thermos of it for lunch. It had been quite some time since I’d invested in ramen when I learned of the ramen grilled cheese craze. The food was first brought to my attention by a slideshow presentation during my internship at Faith Popcorn’s BrainReserve\u2014a forward-thinking marketing consulting firm that studies trends\u2014where it was given as an example of the “pleasure revenge” trend, in which stressed and angry consumers let loose (I like to think of it as the Treat Yo’self<\/a> trend). While laughing along with the rest of the room at the absurdity of someone actually deciding to create a ramen grilled cheese, I was also secretly intrigued. A hybrid of one of my all-time favorite foods and one of my childhood food love affairs? My five-year-old self would have been all about this concoction for sure, and my cheese-deprived five-year-old self is basically calling the shots here. Plus, I’m always about treating yo’self.<\/p>\n

So I went to the store and bought a single serving of beef-flavored ramen—my first time getting ramen in over two years. I used a few different recipes as inspiration, most notably those from People<\/a>, House of Yum<\/a>, and Dude Foods<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The ingredients are simple and inexpensive:<\/p>\n