Hello internets, I babble on and on in this one, just keep scrolling, there are pictures down there . . .
I have a shiny new hard drive, and I am glad to be online and posting again !
A little background information : I'm a few years old, and I work as a chromosome mechanic for a world class university in Berkeley California. I hold a degree in biochemistry, and I have 10+ years experience covering protein chemistry, molecular biology, fermentation science, DNA & RNA sequence manipulation & analysis, and computer programming.
I need to be honest with my eaters. I think I can make a better fake meat than the seitan I used in my amaranth soup recipe. I'm not vegan, and I was challenging myself to work without rice, lentils, and soy for the last trip too. I chose to do seitan because I thought it would be reasonably easy for the trail. I found it fussy. Without having control of the water termperature, and measurments, the recipe was hit or miss. I felt that without limiting my ingredients, I could I achieve a better texture, better chew, and better appearance than anything on the market. I was wrong. There are some incredible fake meats on the market today, but, I couldn't find anything particularly friendly to the lightweight backpacker.
So, I set out to develop a backpacker friendly recipe de novo. I've made a half dozen attempts, and I am near ready to share my progress with you. I have a short trip coming up this weekend, and I will be developing a new dinner recipe. My ambition is to develop a trail friendly tikka masala , using the fake meat. I will be releasing several versions of the fake meat to appeal to my vegatarian and vegan readers, as well as my backpacking audience in the next few weeks.
Anyways, I have myself back online, new recipes later this week !
Here are some pictures of fake meat development, enjoy.
