Sunday, February 28, 2016

Great British Bake Off

Robyn got me hooked on this show called the Great British Bake Off. It has inspired me to try baking a couple of the tastier looking things on the show.

Here is Mary Berry's Lemon Tart:

Not bad for a first crack!

Here is a fruit tart that uses the same sweet crust recipe as the lemon tart, with a crème pâtissière (from this recipe) filling. The crust turned out nicer looking this time:

The recipes are brilliant because they're in grams; you can't possibly muck up the measurements.

I made one slip up on the fruit tart. I used Masa Harina for "corn flour", but I should have used corn starch (only the US and Canada refer to "corn starch", the rest of the world calls it corn flour"). It still tastes fine, but the texture is a little bit off. The other UK-ism is that caster sugar is sold as berry sugar in Canada.

Saturday, February 6, 2016

Homemade Soylent (Schmilk)

In 2013 I read about Soylent, a "nutritionally complete" meal replacement beverage invented by a software engineer, who started a 30-day experiment to see if he could survive on the stuff. His experiment morphed into a crowdfunding campaign with a feed-the-world-cheaply theme and he raised millions of dollars to start mass-producing it for sale.

Do people need "real food" to survive and thrive, or can we break food into its macro- and micronutrient components and reassemble those pieces to create something equivalent? Possibly better?

A lot of people were intrigued by the same question and the "powdered food scene" seemed to grow a lot in 2013 & 2014.

The shipping date of Soylent to Canada was never confirmed. When I started getting serious about losing weight in 2015 I started doing some research on homemade, powdered food meal replacements. The appeal was:

  • Easily portionable and measureable (to meet caloric needs)
  • Inexpensive 
  • Easily hackable (for instance, easy to bump up the protein content or lower the carbohydrate content by adjusting the formula) 
  • The buzz-phrase "nutritionally complete" kept popping up. 

As it turns out, Soylent (the company) hosts a recipe section on their website where users can submit and review recipes.

A 450-calorie serving of homemade Soylent

I found one called Schmilk Chocolate that I thought I'd try. It uses whole milk as a source of fat and protein. I made a batch and had it for breakfast every day for a week. It was pretty good! Bland, but not offensively so.

Since early summer 2015, I have been eating/drinking this homemade Soylent every workday for both breakfast and lunch. For supper and meals on weekends I have "real food". I have observed no ill-effects whatsoever (including excess flatulence, which some Soylent users had trouble with).

The positives are:

  • Easy to make. I mix the powdered ingredients with whole milk a meal ahead; the consistency is better if it sits in the fridge for a while.  
  • Easy to measure (12.6 grams of powder + 100 ml of whole milk = 108 calories. Scale however is appropriate. I started drinking 670 calorie portions, then 550, currently 450). 
  • Easy to consume - you just drink it! 
  • Tastes okay. Hard to describe; it's so bland that there are not any defining offensive flavours. The balance of fat, salt, and everything else seems to tell the body "this is good". I usually add an espresso shot for flavour. 
  • Makes me feel satiated and satisfied until the next meal. 
  • Keeps me regular.
Now that I'm basically at my goal weight, I don't think I am going to stop with Soylent any time soon. It's a part of my routine, and something I miss if my routine is interrupted. 

Recipe - Schmilk Chocolate - "5 day" Batch

1 kg Oat Flour (Only Oats brand comes in 1 kg bags) 
60 g Cocoa powder
53 g Acacia Fibre
30 g Psyllium Husk powder
16 g Iodized Salt 
5.5 g Potassium Citrate 
5.5 g Choline Bitartrate 
2 g Stevia Powder 
1.5 g Xanthan Gum 
5 g (or 5 daily servings) Multivitamin (powder)
9500 ml Whole Milk

Recipe notes:
  • Most ingredients can be found in health food stores, all can be found online. 
  • Mix all dry ingredients ahead of time.
  • Food scale required. 
  • 12.6 g powdered mixture + 100 ml whole milk = 108 calories.
  • Recommend mixing at least 1 hour before consuming for better consistency.