6/17/2015 Cup Noodle Museum

Visiting the Cup Noodle museum - doesn't that sound weird?  It turns out that it's really fun.  We got to make ramen from scratch and pack it in bags we drew on and we chose the ingredients for a customized cup noodle.

Caitlin and her mom joined us.  Kyle had to go to school.  We had a reservation but had no trouble adding them to our group.

First we had to put on our "workers' uniform ".  

After a food safety talk, we mixed the dough.  Calder and I were partners.  We dumped the dry ingredients in a large bowl, made a well, added the wet, and mixed and kneaded.  Our group of six had our own instructor.  Every once in a while she would take over and help us along.  I don't have pictures of this part because my hands were messy.  After flattening the dough, we left it to rest and had another little lecture about what we were doing.

We each had a number and everything matched our numbers, so by the end of the process we were going to get a package that really our own.

Next we ran our dough through the pasta machine many, many, many times.  Calder was our cranker and I folded and placed the dough.

Finally we rolled it through the blades, and cut the strands into 8" pieces.  I don't think quality control would have passed our lengths.  We weighed out 2 portions of exactly 100 grams and fluffed them So they didn't stick together.  We put them in little round numbered baskets and sent them to the fryer.  (We just watched the deep fat frying - the Japanese aren't stupid!)

When they were cool enough, they were packed into the bags we had decorated.

We are lunch in the museum restaurant.  There were food stations around a room, each offering noodles from different countries. I had the Malaysian.

After lunch we customized a cup noodle.  We didn't have to dress up because we were not touching any food.

My cup:

Then we chose 4 additional ingredients.

These were the cutest:

My cup noodle:

Our cups were not only shrinkwrapped, but also we put them into inflatable plastic bags to protect them.

We finished with a visit to the museum.  Thousands of ramen products, and the history of the invention and development of cup noodle.  (And of course, a walk through the museum store.)

On the way back to the bus, we stopped for gelato.  Yong called us to say she could pick us up, so we went to the Pokemon and Build a Bear stores to fill some time.

After a day filled with noodles, the kids wanted to go to a noodle restaurant.  I had cold soba with tempura.