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On Tuesday, a blogger in Taiwan was sentenced to a month of detention and two years probation for writing that a restaurant's beef noodles were "too salty." "The Taichung branch of Taiwan High Court on Tuesday sentenced a blogger who wrote that a restaurant's beef noodles were too salty to 30 days in detention and two years of probation and ordered her to pay NT$200,000 in compensation to the restaurant." The Taichung District Court ruled that the blogger, surnamed Liu, made comments that "exceeded reasonable bounds." Apparently, she wrote that the food at a Taichung beef noodle restaurant was too...

A family noodle shop in Yuen Long has become the world's cheapest eatery awarded the coveted Michelin star. In an unprecedented move, the Michelin Guide Hong Kong Macau 2011, which was released yesterday, handed out one star to the eatery serving a bowl of wonton noodles for HK$16. Ho To Tai, which means "good quality till the end," is one of 13 new restaurants with stars in the third edition of the fine dining bible. Wonton noodles, dried prawn noodles and dumplings stuffed with fish skin are the most popular dishes listed in the guide. "We are surprised with the...

A man in Japan told police he stole a cup of noodles and didn't pay for a cab ride in what they say may have been a bid to get tossed back in prison. Police said the 41-year-old man, whose identity was not provided, arrived at a police station in in Kashihara, Japan, Friday and asked to be arrested for stealing a cup of instant noodles, worth little more than $1, The Mainichi Daily News reported Saturday. Police said the suspect had been released from prison in December, and did not have a job or a place to live. The...

Manufacturers unite against a California law that prohibits the pasta from being kept at room temperature, saying it ignores a long-held cultural tradition. Public health officials cite safety.For 25 years, the Lucky K.T. Noodle Factory in El Monte has been making fresh rice noodles for hundreds of Asian restaurants and supermarkets in Los Angeles and around the country. But a state law requiring manufacturers to refrigerate the pasta instead of allowing it to be stored at room temperature threatens to alter a long-held Asian tradition, said factory owner Tom Thong. "The health inspectors don't understand our culture," said Thong, 53....

What do we really know about our new POTUS Elect? He says that he is a natural born citizen but he can't or won't prove it. He claims to be a christian, but in order to attend that school in Indonesia, he would have had to be muslim. We know next to nothing about his college years, a time when none of his classmates or teachers remember him. What was he doing in Pakistan during the Soviet war in neighboring Afghanistan? Many questions, but very few answers.

TOKYO — Nissin Food Products Co said Friday it was recalling half a million cups of instant noodles over fears of insecticide contamination in the latest food safety scare to rock the country’s consumers. A 67-year-old woman vomited and felt numbness on her tongue after eating Nissin’s Cup Noodle this week in the Tokyo suburb of Fujisawa, the city’s health office said. The product was made at a Nissin factory in Japan. A series of previous scares have involved food imported from China. The health office said on inspecting the Cup Noodle they had discovered paradichlorobenzene, the key chemical in...

The Japanese love their noodles so much that some of them are literally ready to dive in to their bowl of ramen. A Japanese spa on Saturday opened special baths meant to resemble ramen, complete with bath salt shaped like the dangling delicacy, a giant pair of chopsticks overhead and water the aroma of pepper. "The aroma of pepper is said to have the effects of refreshing your mind, warming your burned-out heart and inflaming your passion," explained a statement by spa complex Hakone Kowakien Yunessun in Hakone, one of Japan's most popular hot spring resorts. Ramen lovers in bathing...

TOKYO (Reuters) - The Japanese inventor of instant noodles, a snack that has sold billions of servings worldwide since its launch, died on Friday at the age of 96, according to an official at Nissin Food Products Co., the company he founded. Born in Taiwan in 1910 while it was under Japanese occupation, Momofuku Ando ran clothing and other companies in Taipei and Osaka early in his career. He was inspired to develop the world's first instant noodle product after coming across a long line of people waiting to buy fresh "ramen" noodles from a black market stall during the...

The inventor of instant noodles, Momofuku Ando, has died in Japan, aged 96, of a heart attack. Mr Ando was born in Taiwan in 1910 and moved to Japan in 1933, founding Nissin Food Products Co after World War II to provide cheap food for the masses. His most famous product, Cup Noodle, was released in 1971. Its taste and ease of preparation - adding hot water to dried noodles in a waterproof polystyrene container - have made it popular around the world. Mr Ando said the inspiration for his product came when he saw people lining up to...

LANZHOU, China — One difference between China's remote west and the rest of the country is what people choose to put in their stomachs. Noodles, not rice, are the favorite dish, none more so than the steaming bowl of beef noodles named after this decaying provincial capital on the Yellow River. So in February, as noodle patrons across the city arrived for their morning fix, an unexpected notice awaited them: The price of a bowl of Lanzhou pulled beef noodles was going up. A large bowl, once only 27 cents, would now cost almost 31 cents. "Beef Noodle Price Hike...

Ancient Finding Suggests Pasta Invented In ChinaBEIJING -- Who invented noodles first? A discovery in western China could bolster the argument that the Chinese came up with pasta before the the Italians. Researchers have found a 4,000-year-old clump of yellow noodles inside an overturned bowl in China. The noodles had been made from a dough of two local varieties of millet. The bowl had become sealed with clay, so the noodles were preserved. The findings are published in this week's issue of the journal Nature. A Chinese researcher said they're definitely the earliest noodles ever found. The researcher said the...

Oldest noodles unearthed in China Late Neolithic noodles: They may settle the origin debate The 50cm-long, yellow strands were found in a pot that had probably been buried during a catastrophic flood. Radiocarbon dating of the material taken from the Lajia archaeological site on the Yellow River indicates the food was about 4,000 years old. Scientists tell the journal Nature that the noodles were made using grains from millet grass - unlike modern noodles, which are made with wheat flour. The discovery goes a long way to settling the old argument over who first created the string-like food. Professor Houyuan...

U.S. soldiers brought food and school supplies to residents of the Khadamiyah area in Baghdad. CAMP TIGERLAND, Iraq, June 30, 2005 — The 256th Brigade Combat Team Civil Affairs and the 256th Brigade Combat Team’s 199th Forward Support Battalion collaborated on June 25 to bring 15 tons of food, two tons of school supplies, and more than 2,000 Beanie Babies to the residents of the Khadamiyah area in Baghdad. The items were gifts from the Association of Korean Americans and Operation Iraqi Children. The local Government Information Center connected the soldiers with various charity organizations to help distribute the supplies...