With my oldest daughter’s most recent plea to me to buy her groceries, she has officially been christened with “Food of the College Student:” Top Ramen. “Really?” I think. “How could she have sunk to this level after all my lovingly frozen, leftover, home cooked meals?”

Before we had kids I used ramen noodles all the time in stir fry. After the kids were old enough to eat real food, I quit making it. Although my oldest was not a picky eater, I think the seasonings I used in stir fry were a bit strong for her. When I started making stir fry again several years ago, my youngest having gone from picky-eater to eating almost anything, I totally forgot I used ramen noodles for the base.

Then a few weeks ago, my mom made up a little care package for my daughter; it included a package of Top Ramen. And although my daughter had had ramen noodles at friends’ houses, she’d never had it in the way it was originally meant to be eaten: cooked in hot water with the included seasoning packet added. How could she know about ramen noodles, but never have eaten it the way it was originally meant to be eaten? Her friend owns “101 Things to Do with Ramen Noodles.”

Out of curiosity at my daughter’s new-found love for ramen noodles, I Googled that cookbook and also found “101 More Things to Do with Ramen Noodles,” “The Top Ramen Noodle Cookbook,” “Ramen to the Rescue,” and “One Hundred Ways to Make Ramen Noodles.”

Additionally, there was a site titled “All you wanted to know about Top Ramen and Cup ‘O Noodles.” As with many aspects of being a housewife, there are many things I never wanted to know about, nor did I ever think to even find out about until the issue presented itself (septic tanks come to mind).

But as a mother, I also have had to explore phases of my children’s lives that I never had any interest in (The Twilight books and anime conventions for starters: The Twilight books highlight everything I never wanted my teen daughters to be about; anime conventions are good, clean, healthy outlets for creative kids).

I had no idea, with the exception of using the noodles in stir fry, what people would do with ramen noodles besides make soup. I’ve heard ruminations of dry ramen noodles with chocolate, but, as a chocolate lover, I chose to ignore such a wasted mixture. Better to eat it off a spoon than pour it over ramen.

I have no intention of furthering my ramen noodle cooking skills, however, as I continued my research (and you thought all these columns were just full of random information from my head), I also Googled “how to cook Top Ramen.” Several sites popped up that reference it as a typical college student meal. One site was called a “College Survival Guide” with a whole section about how to properly cook Top Ramen and other ways you can eat it.

Besides ramen being the official college student diet, I also learned that Mr. Momofuku Ando invented instant chicken ramen in Japan in 1958. It came to the U.S in 1970 and he invented Cup o’ Noodles because Americans didn’t have big enough ramen bowls.

Although I mourn the obvious failure of supplementing my daughter’s college diet with wholesome, frozen, home-cooked meals, I have to give myself a little pat on the back for lessons well-taught: along with her request for Top Ramen she also asked for canned beets and French cut green beans.

Gretchen Leigh is a stay-at-home mom who lives in Covington. She is thinking about a campaign to make Top Ramen one of the major food groups. You can also read more of her writing and her daily blog on her website livingwithgleigh.com or on Facebook at “Living with Gleigh.” Her column is available every week atmaplevalleyreporter.com under the Lifestyles section.