::PUTTING THE "SOY" IN SOYLENT GREEN::Okay, guys, please promise me you'll never
ever eat this: The Simply Asia Szechwan Garlic-flavored
Soy Noodle Soup Bowl.
I buy no-freezer-required meals at
World Market fairly often; I like
Tasty Bite meals and several
Thai Kitchen products. So, impressed by the 70-calorie "price tag," I thought
Hey, this'll be like having ramen, only healthier!The broth was good, not to sodiummy, not too bland, not too spicy. It had bits of reconstituted garlic in it. And 'twas MSG-free.
But the soy noodles. On the package, they look, y'know, noodle-like -- with long-rectangular-prismic forms, in a dappled wheat-pasta shade of brown. I expected them to feel like whole grain noodles, or maybe like tofu.
What I got were strange, leathery abstract shapes -- which hadn't the substance of pasta, or the give of tofu. Their surfaces were a mottled off-white, and the apparent texture was wrinkled. They were unexpectedly hard to bite through, and halfway through the bowl, this thought flashed through my mind:
I'm eating human skin.
I couldn't finish the bowl.