I looked on, half horrified, half intrigued, as she set the timer for 10 minutes. Trying to hide my disgust, I attempted to confirm that this wasn’t some kind of strange mistake, a careless slip of the finger on the time selection wheel: “Did you mean to select 10 minutes, there?”

“Yeah, of course,” she responded, matter-of-factly. “That way, all the water cooks out, and the noodles get nice and soft. If you add the seasoning packet first, the flavour soaks in while it boils.” 

As a two-minute (or maybe three, if I get distracted) ramen-boiler, I was flabbergasted, but I decided after a few minutes that we could probably still be friends. Tolerance, after all, is crucial in such polarizing times as ours. 

At this point, the party was winding down, and the remaining guests were transitioning from tipsy to hungry. My friend’s ramen boiling—misguided as it may have been—set off something of a chain reaction. The smart thing to do would probably have been to boil a large pot of water and cook the packets all at once, but as it happened, a steady stream of people began preparing their own bowls of noodles, each one slightly different from the last. Whether it was boiling the water on the stove or using a kettle, cooking the noodles for two, three or four minutes (or, alas, 10…), adding vegetable bouillon or soy sauce or sriracha, or a host of other minor tweaks, everyone had their own routine—and everyone was convinced theirs was the best. 

While I was shuffling around the kitchen, avoiding the paths of these impromptu ramen chefs (it is, after all, impossible not to be in the way in a student’s kitchen), a whole world of instant ramen variations was revealed to me. I took on the role of observer, discovering details that had been lurking just beneath the surface, hidden in each of our solitary, late-night culinary pursuits. Instant ramen is the ultimate “meal of least resistance,” scarfed down at the kitchen counter between essays, or between parties. 

In his essay “Unzipping Mr. Rabbit,” Rob Percival writes about the way ultra-processed foods such as instant ramen disconnect us from traditional, tangible, and communal ways of preparing meals: “They are made for mindless consumption [….] We eat them alone or on the move. They are pre-prepared and pre-chewed.” 

Percival, in the end, decides to hunt and skin his own rabbits. While I don’t think my landlord would appreciate that, Percival’s ideas about taking time to physically prepare and give thanks for our food—and, crucially, to do this together—resonate with me. A well-planned soup can feed eight people for the cost of one UberEats delivery, and there’s no better place for a good conversation than over a simmering stew, with the snow falling outside and a cup of tea in your hand. 

Unfortunately, there’s no way to get around the fact that cooking takes money and time, and it is so easy to pay the 80 cents, take the five minutes, and eat in the dark, accompanied only by the glow of your half-written essay. 

In A Sand County Almanac, Wisconsin naturalist Aldo Leopold echoes Percival’s concern, writing, “There are two spiritual dangers in not owning a farm. One is the danger of supposing that breakfast comes from the grocery, and the other is that heat comes from the furnace.”

While I love Leopold, my midterm tomorrow morning precludes me from the noble labour of chopping my own firewood, and I fear that rent on a farm in the Plateau may be beyond my price range. The strange thing about our modern, industrialized context is that chopping your own firewood is a luxury, rather than a money-saving act of self-reliance. 

But I don’t think that’s the whole story: Cooking in community can drastically reduce the cost of groceries per person, while building bonds and strengthening social support networks at the same time. Three years of cooking for others in university has convinced me that it is not just an indulgence, but a necessary act of resistance in a society that pushes people to cook their instant noodles in three minutes, and eat them in two.