The Addendum "I tried to write shorter ~Mark Twain
route99west.com/addendum
is an occasional journal of Oregon, from arts and books to public policy & transportation.
All content © 2006- by Alexander B. Craghead, except where otherwise noted.
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Book Reviews
Review: Here There Nowhere
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Bachelor's Special #1: Instant Noodles Review
Week in Review... in review.
Week in Review, Vol. XI
Week in Review, Vol. X
Week in Review, Vol. IX
Blogroll Additions
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Other Notable Blogs
Cafe Unknown
Travel, History and Portland Oregon by Dan Haneckow
Jack Bog's Blog
By Jack Bogdanski of Portland, Oregon. (Like he needs any other introduction by now? -- A.B.C.)
For Portlanders Only
"Why buy a mattress anywhere else?"
Good Stuff NW
Featuring stuff that is good in the NW
LOST Magazine
LOST Magazine is an online monthly magazine that combines elements of many other literary, online, and national magazines with a singular mission--to reclaim in writing lost people, places, and things.
Mapes on Politics
Way West of the Beltway
Outside Is America
A journal about photography, roadtrips, trains and life, with occasional detours into movies, baseball, music, family and more.
The Photographers' Railroad Page
Good photos usually have good stories to go with them.... The goal of The Photographers' Railroad Page is to provide an outlet for top quality photographs and their story.
Portland Food & Drink
Throwing Ourselves on the Grenade of Bad Food to Save You
Portland Transport Blog
A Conversation About Access & Mobility in the Portland/Vancouver Region
PowellsBooks.Blog
Authors, readers, critics, media -- and booksellers
Rambling West
The musings of a farmer with a typewriter and camera
Stumptown Confidential
Documenting Portland, Oregon architecture, history, and culture through photos, postcards, and words.
The Unauthorized Observer
Observations on faith, photography, trains, baseball, the city where I live (Fullerton, Calif.), anything that I find funny (a lot of things) or irritating (some things) and various incidents involving friends and family.
Under the Weather
...the open road, fatherhood, family life, music, railroads, photography, popular and unpopular culture, sex, violence, religion, the oppression of consumerism and capitalism and the general bullshit that makes up modern life.
Urban Planning Overlord
A blog to counter the myths, lies, and demagoguery others use against sound city planning to further their own ends, fair and foul - but also to urge the profession itself to pull back from the occasional wretched PC exces.
VanPortlander
Living in Vancouver; working in Portland. I have some thoughts.
Whiskey, Texas
...life and experiences in Texas and the Southwest. Recurring themes: Photography, railroads, fading ads / ghost signs, fallen-flag railroad logos, boxcars, bicycling, Texas music, pop culture, sports, road trips, literature, kids and family.
World Scott
The Travel Writing and Photography of Scott Lothes
Blegs & Bargains
Amazon Book Wishlist
B&H Wishlist
My eBay Listings
Powell's Books Wishlist
Saturday, March 22, 2008
Bachelor's Special #1: Instant Noodles Review
The bachelor's kitchen can be a lonely lonely place. Recently, this predicament came up in conversations with some of my fellow bachelor friends, and I hit upon the idea of trying to solve it. Labels: Food
The goal, of course, would be to produce a good quality meal in 30 minutes or less, with little mess and few ingredients. This is a challenge I'm still working to solve.
In the meanwhile, how about something simpler to tide you by? A long time staple of the college student is the good old Nissen Cup [of] Noodles. Just add boiling water to these foam cups, and three minutes later, you have an Asian-styled take on the TV dinner.
One of my favorite places to shop is Uwajimaya, the Asian grocery supermarket with locations in the Portland and Seattle metro areas. Normally I shop there for some of the best produce anywhere, as well as exotic seasonings and a wide variety of noodles. One aisle, though -- one entire aisle -- is lined with instant noodle selections. Lined with them! Might there be something more exciting lurking behind the cryptic labels?
This is no Michael Pollan whole foods meal we'll be experiencing here. But it's okay to be bad now and then, and everything here is probably a heck of a lot better for you than the average McBurger.
Let the tests begin!
Nissen Cup [of] Noodles
We can't really undertake this sort of comparison without a base to start from. What to choose? This was the easiest decision: the iconic Nissen Cup [of] Noodles. These little foam cups are the the most popular and most commonly known of the instant noodle world. They're cheap, too: my chicken-flavored cup cost me a whopping 49 cents.
Pluses: The price of the Cup [of] Noodles would lead one to believe that the quality would be low as well, yet the resulting product isn't really all that bad. The noodles have a curling tendency that makes them easy to eat with either fork or chopsticks. The tall, narrow cup shape helps to hold in heat for the product for a long time.
Minuses: If there is any major fault with this old staple, it's that it's forgettable. The flavor is bland, and the ingredients can hardly be called authentic for a ramen soup; corn, peas and carrots seems to speak to sourcing common American agricultural products if anything.
Bottom line: For 49 cents, it's hard to beat the value, but surely noodles can be better than this.
"Kung Fu" Szechuan Pork Bowl
Next up: an entry made in Taiwan, the rather comically named "Kung Fu" Szechuan Pork Bowl. This is a typical offering from the instant noodles aisle at Uwajimaya, coming in a foam container shaped like a bowl. Flavor choices tend to be based on form of meat used; I chose the Szechuan pork flavor for its apparent position middle-of-the-pack. Unlike the Cup [of] Noodles, this noodle bowl comes with two packets inside that much be opened and added to the noodles, one containing dried vegetables and seasonings, the other containing a dried soup base that looks a bit like dried caulking. $0.79 of yummy goodness.
Pluses: The foam bowl on the Kung Fu offering is particularly thick, making it easy to hold. Although the flavor is not stellar, it is more pronounced than the standard old Nissen offering.
Minuses: The dried vegetables and other ingredients tend to stay rather firm, and the noodles, being round, tend to be harder to grasp with chopsticks than the good-old 49 cent standard.
Bottom line: While marginally better than the standard in flavor, with hard, difficult to identify vegetables this is a forgettable bowl of noodles.
Nong Shim Bowl Noodle Soup Spicy Chicken Flavor
Our next challenger is from Nong Shim, and is made in the exotic far-eastern locale of Rancho Cucamonga, California. Again we have a bowl-style package. Nong Shim only has one packet inside -- an envelope of seasonings -- rather than two. The resulting product is a Ramen style soup. It's pretty boring looking when made, nothing like the pretty picture on the label. $1.09 at Uwajimaya.
Pluses: The Nong Shim has a nice spicy kick that is quite appetizing. The noodles are no larger than the others, yet it seems a more substantial meal.
Minuses: The broth seems a bit cheesy at first; the vegetables are almost nonexistent.
Bottom line: Twice the price of the standard, the Nong Shim offering is also more the twice the flavor. Cheesy, but a good buy.
Thai Kitchen Noodle Cart Pad Thai
The Thai Kitchen line of products is fairly easy to find these days, being in most major supermarkets; I grabbed one anyway just to round out the test. The product comes in a different format, this time in a square plastic box similar to a Rubbermaid sandwich container. Inside is a packet of noodles, a packet of oil, a packet of seasonings, and a plastic fork. To prepare, you empty the noodle packet in the container and pour in boiling water, then lid it. When done, the water gets poured out of handy slits in the lid, the lid is removed, and then the oil and seasoning are tossed with the noodles. The price is $1.99, a full four times the Nissen standard. 
Pluses: The final product is tasty and decent. While, as usual, it's not as nice as the package photo, this did at least produce something that would look good on a plate. The inclusion of a plastic fork makes this ideal for an on the go meal.
Minuses: The container can get quite hot while cooking, making it harder to remove the water. Similarly, be careful not to overfill it; the lid doesn't feel the most secure at times.
Bottom line: This feels more like a real meal than the other options, and the tacky factor is restricted to the plastic container and utensil.
Nissen Donbei Tempura Soba
Like the standard, this -- our most expensive option at $2.69 -- is made by Nissen. Preparation is similar to the other bowl-shaped entries, with a seasoning packet that is poured onto the dried noodles before boiling water is added. Unlike the others, this one comes with what looks like a giant coin shaped cookie -- a cake of tempura batter which gets unwrapped and added like a floating crouton on top of the soup.
Unlike the standard, this product is attempting to simulate an authentic Japanese dish -- it is, after all, made in and primarily marketed to Japan. The noodles are square cut buckweat soba noodles with a decent texture and more flavor than any of the others. Upon opening, the strong yet appetizing seafood aroma emanates from the noodles. 
Pluses: Toothsome and tasty noodles, good flavor, exotic without being overpowering.
Minuses: Tempura cake seems odd -- what actually has been fried in it? It appears to be no more than a hunk of batter with no filling, and soon gets soggy in the soup.
Bottom line: A nice treat and a welcome break from monotony, but not worth it if you have a real kitchen and a far cheaper package of noodles.
The winner is a hard call. This is, after all, a "bachelor's special", designed as a quick and cheap meal on a night when you just don't feel like cooking. It's not a gourmet meal, so authenticity -- however nice -- isn't all that important. Fill and taste, however, are.
So, the winner?
The nod goes to Nong Shim. Although not the most authentic of the choices, their noodle bowls are by far the strongest flavored and most stomach-satisfying. They're also one of the simpler preparations, with a single packet to open and dump in.
Both the Thai Kitchen and Nissen Donbei offerings were worthy attempts at something better than a throw-away Cup [of] Noodles, and might make a good once-in-a-while addition to the cupboard, but it would be just as easy to stock some dried soba noodles and some bonito, or some rice noodles and peanut sauce if you felt like that sort of thing.
And of course, don't forget the humble Cup [of] Noodles standard; at $0.49, it remains the bargain basement champ.
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Tuesday, March 4, 2008
Week in Review... in review.
Since December, I've pumped out 11 weeks of Week In Review, but I just don't think I can put out a 12th. Labels: Blogging, Book Reviews, Food, Site News, Week in Review
I've learned a few things. First off, it's still too blog-centric. When I began The Addendum it was meant to be just that, an addendum for things that didn't have place in the regular route99west web site, but which were still begging for an outlet. Casual efforts, off-topic items, rants and raves, and the like. WIR was an attempt to introduce some regularity to the mix.
I have discovered I don't like regularity.
Once you start going down the "true" blog road, it becomes a kind of obligation. "What will I write about now?" That kind of thing. It can quickly become a contest to see who can write about something soonest, and with as many blogs as there are our there, why bother? You'll never be first.
Nor will you be original. The vast majority of blogs -- including my own WIR posts -- are basically responses to the work of others, most often the old media. It's all too much a mix of incestuousness and parasitic journalism.
Not everyone is like this though. More recently, I have been inspired by KAB's Good Stuff NW (who recently celebrated her 400th post by-the-way, congratulations!) to do some food writing. This is a topic I've wanted to get into for some time, but I just never quite got an idea of where I could begin.
Now, however, I do: the plight of the bachelor chef. I'm working on a few original content posts (wow, what a novel idea on the Blogosphere!) including solutions from the gourmet (cook it yourself in under 30 minutes with no canned, frozen, or packaged ingredients) to the not-so-gourmet (cup-o-noodles reviews, anyone?). And more importantly, I'm having fun writing them!
Now this is what the Addendum was for.
So, changes are coming to the blog. No more WIR. Instead? Less frequent but more original content, and maybe even a bit of firsthand journalism. One feature that's not going away are the book reviews, probably one of the more enjoyable features I write for The Addendum. In fact, I may have some news about those in the near future. And I'll still have thoughts and observations about journalism, local current events, government, and transportation topics too when appropriate.
But right now, can I just say, I can't wait until strawberry season?
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Friday, February 22, 2008
Week in Review, Vol. XI
Pronouncements of doom for various car styles have always amused me. Some time ago, my mother covered a screen with newspaper clippings of British sports cars -- the covers of magazines, newspaper articles, even classified advertisements. One of the articles is written in the late 1970s, and predicted the doom of the convertible. New U.S. safety standards, you see, made them inherently unsafe, and therefore it was only a matter of time before they would be gone from the market, a memory from the past. Labels: Automobiles, Civics, Design, Food, Portland, Transportation
Yeah. Right.
Well, now it's the muscle car's turn.
While in the world of transportation, it appears the Washington State Ferries sytem is in trouble. WS-DOT is even proposing a restructuring.
The mess gave me one of those "what ever happened to" moments regarding Mike Thorne. You might recall that Thorne used to be director of Port of Portland and quit to run for governor. When he dropped out of the race, he went to run the ferries in Washington.
So what's become of Mike? And can he be blamed (rightly or wrongly) for any of Washington's water-borne mess? Well he quit the ferry job in 2004 and returneed to Pendleton. As Seattle Times staff writer Susan Gilmore put it in 2004,"He said he came into the job with huge expectations, that he'd be able to achieve financial footing with no plan how to get there. Raising ferry fares drove away customers, voters rejected Referendum 51, which would have dumped billions of dollars into state transportation projects, and there were no plans how to replace the aging state ferries, some 70 years old."
And now? Notice that "Big Look" land use review that the legislature wants to fund? Thorne's a member. That may or may not mean anything -- put your tinfoil conspiracy hats on now if you wish -- but I find it an interesting path for someone who thought themselves a gubernatorial contender.
Which brings up another question: what ever happened to Ron Saxton?
Also up in Seattle, the Big O reports that it may only be a matter of time before the Sonics move to Oklahoma. The single commenter on the Big O's story says "who cares".
I have a question for you, ladies and gentleman. Who owns the Blazers? Where does he live? And what might he do if Seattle no longer had a pro basketball team?
Lastly, a food related story. Author Michael Pollan has been making the local circuit here lately, sending parts of the Portland food blogosphere into titters. Why? Pollan has written a book that dares to suggest that we should eat food, not "food substitutes".
Pollan has some interesting things to say, and Edible Portland sat down and did a video interview with him. The first part is here. I found Pollan's comments about Sour Cream and tofu-based meat substitutes to be so common-sense based that I had to pinch myself that I was hearing these words at all. Can it be? Might sugar and butter be... acceptable? It's so sad to think that Julia Child -- who seemed to improve any recipe by adding either butter or "booze" to it -- didn't live to see this day.
That's all for now.
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Friday, February 15, 2008
Week in Review, Vol. X
First up this week: the saga of railroad service in Southern Oregon continued this week. RailAmerica, owner of the Central Oregon & Pacific, sent a response back to Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski stating that the company would undertake repairs to the currently shuttered Coos Bay line on its own dime. The hitch? The railroad conglomerate wants a commitment from the state that they will receive assistance for both repair costs and operating expenses on the route. Labels: Food, Portland History, Public Policy, Railroads, Transportation, Week in Review
The Governor wasted no time crafting a response, which said in no uncertain terms "no deal". As it sits now, it appears the state is still on track to pursue a forced transfer of the line to public ownership. That said, the fact that RailAmerica was willing to change their proposal at all suggests to this observer that they have "blinked", and can likely be moved further with the right amount of pressure.
The Seattle Times printed an op-ed this week highlighting the conundrum freight transportation is in: it's just not that sexy."Interestingly enough, the same representatives who want tax dollars to supplement ferry service to Vashon and Maury islands are not arguing that Puget Sound would be harmed by increasing ferry traffic.
In short, passenger services are considered worthy projects, while freight mobility gets the short shrift. Yet freight mobility is often responsible for vast amounts of the economy, and improvements there can make huge impacts on pollution and congestion.
These representatives also do not seem to be taking into account that transporting sand and gravel by barge, instead of by truck, saves fuel, reduces heavy truck traffic on area roads, reduces greenhouse-gas emissions and helps keep down the cost of state-(taxpayer-)funded transportation projects that benefit the entire region. One average barge keeps 186 heavy trucks and trailers off the road."
Two industrial stories of note this week. First up, the Willamette Week has a neat story on Oregon City's Blue Heron Paper. The company is one of the few independent paper companies left in the region. Less satisfying news comes via the Statesman Journal, who notes that the old Steinfeld Pickles plant is closing. Wonder where the pickles are made now?
Odd news roundup: the Albany Fire Department has gone retro; Stumptown Confidential brings us mod churches; LEGO hits the classroom; and a postcard mailed in 1929 arrives at last.
A quick hat-tip to VanPortlander for pointing out this tour of Interstate Avenue's neon. Cool stuff.
Lastly, a big loud amen to Katlheen Bauer over at Good Stuff NW for her post on foodie terminology addiction:"Then this morning I'm reading a seemingly harmless Valentines Day article in the NYT about couples who have different food preferences, and one woman says that she's been able to tolerate her husband's occasional need for animal flesh because she's not a "vegangelical." What?"
Kathleen, don't tell me you haven't heard about vegansexuality yet?
On that very sketchy note, I think I should leave now, quietly!
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Thursday, January 31, 2008
Blogroll Additions
Just a brief note that I've added three more links to the blogroll. Labels: Blogging, Food, Public Policy, Site News
First up, freelance writer Kathleen Bauer's Good Stuff NW, a real gem of foodie goodness. I get hungry anytime I read it.
Next up is Mapes on Politics, the blog written by Jeff Mapes for the Oregonian. In a world of often useless political e-ramblings, Jeff brings a welcome adult note to the field.
Lastly, another foodie blog, Portland Food & Drink. Their slogan -- "Throwing ourselves on the grenade of bad food to save you" -- probably says it best. Gossipy, frank, and intelligent, it's like happy hour with food world insiders.
I'm really picky about adding blogs to the blogroll, so I'm highly recommending these.
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Week in Review, Vol. VIII
There's been a lot of infrastructure news this week. First up, Seattle's Sound Transit might get an expanded authority to oversee general road projects in the region. I'm not sure if this idea is a boon of synergy or a monopolistic boondoggle. Labels: Automobiles, Food, Media, Photography, Public Policy, Railroads, Technology, Transportation
Rail has been front and center in a lot of the news. In Oregon, Governor Kulongowski has told the Central Oregon and Pacific that there will be no discussion of helping out with maintenance or rehabilitation costs unless the company reopens the Coos Bay line first. (Good for Ted!) Meanwhile, the Port of Tillamook Bay's coastal line has until February 7th to get their FEMA request in. I don't know if this means they need their 25% share by then, or just a pledge towards it, or what, but I can hear a loud ticking reminiscent of the intro to 60 Minutes. Lastly, a proposal to restore the Amtrak Pioneer continues to drag along.
Then there's the continuing saga of the bridges. Of note: Salem wants $680 million for a new one, while the Portland metro area's new Columbia River crossing just may not pencil out.
At the rate that infrastructure costs are climbing, we'd either better start flooding the market with steel to bring prices down, or face the possibility of reduced weight capacities and a reduced flow of people and commerce.
Meanwhile developments in cellulosic ethanol may make this plan obsolete before it's finished. Hat tip to Bojack.
In related auto news, Autoblog gets a first drive of the Tesla, and reports that speed bumps aren't green! Finally, a PC reason to get rid of those bone-shakers!
Oh, and one more via Autoblog: the strangest cooking contraption ever. If George Foreman endorses it, watch out America.
Lastly, news that Jaguar may be planning a hard-core sportscar. I'm drooling already.
Lewis County was hit pretty hard by the flooding on December 5th. Among the victims of the rising waters was the Black Sheep Creamery. Irony of ironies, while the local residents hand-wring over the reopening of the local Wal-Mart, the creamery is relying on rebuild money from a fundraiser in -- guess where? -- Portland.
Am I the only one who finds it strange that it's the cities of the region that may be the salvation of small family farms?
Speaking of food, Good Stuff NW reports of the rebirth of a local grocery store. My only question, can I have one in my neighborhood? Please?
And in Seattle, things aren't all they are cracked up to be. Says Portland Food & Drink's "Food Dude", "No wonder our washed up restaurateurs are ending up in Seattle."
Ouch.
Before I go, a two photographic notables around the web this week include a photo essay by Martin Burwash the decline of rural Washington, and a nice collection of images from Elrond Lawrence on the vintage signs of Salinas. Love the neon, El.
Take care, all.
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