Category: recipes

Hermit Chow

Hermit Chow Lab

This is my Hermit Chow laboratory.   I create optimal nutrition here for around 2 dollars a day.   I don’t ever have to go to town now; I just order my supplies online.   I took inventory yesterday; I have at least 3 months of supplies in my lab.

I started out with Soylent and then got into the DIY Soylent site.   There is a video to teach you how to use the site.  There are tons of people’s recipes.   This one is 1.69 a day for food.    This person did a minimal price version for .62 cents a day.

The basics you will need to build your own Soylent are:  A source of carbs, a protein source, a source of fat, a multivitamin/multi-mineral tablet, Calcium with added D+K, Potassium, some source of Choline ( I chose soy lecithin) and a source of sodium (either salt or baking soda).  Depending on whose nutritional guidance you may be following (there are many to choose from) you may also want to add some extra biotin, some MSM powder, and some chromium.   I bought those extra things but after researching it, I think they may not be necessary.

Most people mix many days of their dry mix concoctions–(some a whole month)– at once so it’s convenient.  Tip:  You can mix the oil in with the dry flour and it keeps fine.

When I got tired of drinking my sustenance, I used less water and made it into a cookie dough.    Currently I’m using 10 grain cereal as my carb so I make it in to porridge.    To change things up I have another recipe of curried red lentils and TVP.

I’ve been interested in making a backpacking version and maybe trying it out on a 600 mile test hike.

For some reason, this is so interesting and fun to me.

On a related note, I found this Hermicity site where you can live alone and a drone will deliver Soylent and water to your hermitage. A hermit colony ran as a decentralized autonomous organization on the ethereum blockchain.

 

Soylent cookie dough

So you bought a bunch of Soylent so you never have to leave your cabin but you are tired of drinking all your meals…..   Try making it into some Soylent cookie dough.   Delicious nutrition.  ingredients

Mix, eat raw and enjoy.

cal.

592

 carbs

56 gm

 fat

27gm

 protein

37gm

 sugar

13gm

 

 fiber

10gm

recipeforenlightenment?

Trail food: Roasted seaweed

81HVmFjWwRL._SY606_I discovered roasted seaweed at the little hiker store in the hostel in Lone Pine.  After doing the math, I calculated it had a whopping 165 calories per ounce (6 per gram)–pretty good for vegetables–although I assume, most of the calories come from the oil they are roasted in. 31Jpkh6DOYL

I eat them like chips, but the worker at the store said she crumbles them in anything she is cooking–contributes salt, oil, and veggies to any meal.

71hnYgfYVpL._SL1500_The packaging is quite bulky; I emptied them all into a baggie and threw away the packaging.

I think it may be cheapest to buy from Costco.

No calorie snow treat

I love lemon sorbet but its full of sugar plus you can’t buy it out here.

yummysnowI bought some stevia and true lemon packets from amazon and combine with a big bowl of snow to make a delicious no calorie treat.   Often I eat this 10 times a day.

In a big bowl dissolve 1/2 teaspoon Mommy Knows Best pure stevia power  and 6 packets of True Lemon  with a little hot water.  Add snow, mix and enjoy.

 

Backwoods Raw

I’m on my 82nd day of eating raw.    I don’t  remember how it all started but something on the Internet must of inspired me.  Then I asked the library to mail me a book on raw food eating and then I decided to try it.

All the stuff I read said you needed a bunch of  appliances—an expensive juicer, a 500 dollar blender, a dehydrator,  a food processor, and a refrigerator and freezer.

I have a knife and a grater.   I’m thinking about adding a potato masher to mash up avocados and tomatoes.

The book I read was called, “12 steps to Raw Foods: How to End Your Dependency on Cooked Food”

Some of her “scientific evidence” is skewed but I looked past it.

Cheap cabin eats: Caramelized Onion soup.

Onion soup ingredientsI used to make this soup all the time at my BC cabin.   Maybe it tasted good because there wasn’t a lot of other stuff to eat but I loved it.   Once some kayakers floated by and I invited them in for a lunch of this soup.    What’s great about it, is all you need is some onions, a little sugar, oil, salt and pepper.

Put  4 tbs. oil in pot.  Add 4 thinly sliced large onions and wilt over medium-low heat, covered for 20 minutes.

Sprinkle 1/4 cup of sugar over onions(I used brown sugar because it’s what I had), toss, and cook, uncovered, until caramelized, 10 minutes.  Sprinkle with salt and pepper.

Add 3 cups of water and simmer, uncovered over medium heat for 15 minutes.    Then add 3 more cups of water and cook for another 40 minutes till it is rich in taste.

Sure it probably would be better if you had beef stock instead of water,  and butter instead of oil, and some port to add flavor.    And yeah some french bread and melted Gruyere, baked on top would probably be nice.   But I never have any of that stuff so this is the way I make it.

Trail food: smashed up potato chips

A big bag of potato chips easily fits into a quart zip-lock  if you smash them up first.   Then you just eat them with a spoon or put them in your tortilla along with whatever else you are putting in there that day.    If you are cooking, they also would be a good addition to hot meals.

I met a guy on the trail  who’s favorite trail lunch was  peanut butter, cheese, fresh onion, and crumbled up potato chips all rolled up into a tortilla.

Potato chips offer about 150 calories per ounce;  One of the best calorie to weight ratios you can get.

My morning happiness tea concoction.

tea in a jarI’ve been off daily coffee for almost a year.   This is what I drink in the mornings now:

  1. In saucepan put grated fresh ginger—the more the better, cinnamon, black pepper, and water.
  2. Bring to a boil
  3. Put 2 Good Earth Original  tea bags and 2 black tea bags into quart container.  Pour water over tea.   Don’t take out tea bags; that way it gets stronger as you drink it.

Don’t strain it,  chew on the ginger pieces while you drink.  I’m using about 2 pounds of fresh ginger a month these days.

Cheapest way, I have found, to get Good Earth Tea is from Amazon “subscribe and save” plan.  It works out to 3.00 for a box of 25, delivered.

WARNING:  May cause euphoria.

Delicious monotony

Five years ago, I sold my house and all my stuff and bought a water access only cabin in coastal BC. I didn’t have a boat so I would pay a water taxi to drop me off and would tell him to come back and get me in a month or sometimes two.

It would be easy to live off the land up there as there are lots of berries, mushrooms, edible plants and seafood to eat. The cabin came with a row boat and a crab trap. I bought a cheap fishing pole and some hooks and lures. There were muscles lying on the beach in front of my cabin. A ways up the inlet there were oysters and seaweed beds. It was a veritable Garden of Eden. However, I almost always ate the food I had brought with me instead of living off the land ascabin-810.jpg I had dreamed of.

I decided to only bring up a very monotonous yet nutritional diet, thinking that I would tire of the monotony and go out and forage for food. However the two meals that I would make for myself proved to be so delicious and satisfying that I was always happy to eat them. They were:

Super oats.
Oatmeal, raisins, almonds, cinnamon, soy protein powder. (Even better with brown sugar) Cook the oatmeal and raisins with extra water so that when you add the soy protein powder it isn’t too dry.

Garlic fried rice.
Sauté a half to a whole head of garlic along with a lot of dried red peppers in oil, add cooked brown rice( let the rice sit for a bit uncovered so it dries out some) , add an egg to it all and stir it around until the egg is cooked. (Even better when sprinkled with seasoned gourmet rice vinegar.)

new snow ice cream.

cabin-527.jpgA lot of new snow fell today. I scooped some up in a bowl and poured some canned milk, vanilla syrup and some caramel syrup on it and mixed it all up. It tasted a little like ice cream. My favorite snow topping is lemon juice and sugar, but I don’t have any more lemon juice. For awhile I was putting instant ice tea mix on the snow. I liked that but I’m out of that too. When on the trail I have flavored my snow with lemonade mix or Jello mix (both of which make excellent hot beverages as well).