Today I tried out Michael's recipe for Human Chow[1] (that's chow for
humans). I like the idea of cooking without using animals, and I like
the idea of 'complete meals'--meals that can satisfy your nutritional
needs on their own. Michael's also right that it's good to have
something healthy and nutritious around for when you want to eat because
you're hungry. Here are my thoughts on it.

The recipe was pretty easy to follow and enough fun to make.

 * In place of straight quinoa, I used a mix of quinoa, chia, and
   amaranth, since I had some already (I don't know the proportions--I
   bought it mixed).

 * I used olive oil instead of soybean oil since I had some already. I
   don't know how this effects the nutritional content.

 * I used cannellini beans because I couldn't get pinto beans.

 * The recipe at one point mentions spring onions, then at another point
   mentions onions. I used spring onions.

 * I added garlic because it's tasty and healthy and chilli sauce
   because I add chilli sauce to lots of things (yum).

 * I don't know how big "a bag" of peas is supposed to be, since you get
   different sizes of bags. I used about 500g, which seems about right.

 * I steamed the peas in a steamer instead of microwaving them. (Save
   the water for soup!)

First impression: The recipe is huge. I expected it to be big, but it is
huge. I think I ended up with about 3.5 kg of food.

It's fairly tasty. I was actually expecting it to be a little
underwhelming, so I'm pleasantly surprised. (Low expectations are great
for when you don't want to be let down.) I'd like to rave about it, but
I can't quite. Maybe with some tweaking I could. The real test, though,
will be whether I get sick of it by 3.5kg.

There are some meals that, for reasons I don't understand, I can just
never get tired of. Among these are kebab on rice (I have falafel) and
probably nachos[2].

I don't know if the chow will quite qualify as one of those, but I have
no objections to it either. I feel it will take a variety of garnishes
fairly well.

It's a bit mushy. I wonder whether I'd be able to cook the quinoa a bit
drier next time. I almost wonder whether it's better to store the quinoa
separately from the rest of it to allow for a bigger variety of serving
options.

I feel you could up the content of all the spices (although it doesn't
need any more salt), but this might reduce the versatility in terms of
garnishes a bit.

It's not very TVP-ish and I actually wouldn't mind a bit more. That
would probably upset the nutritional balance according to the standards
Michael's using, though. Whether these standards are valid is another
question.

All in all, I'm going to eat the rest of it.

[1] gopher://gopher.4d2.org:70/0/phlog/posts/post1392.txt
[2] gopher://45.76.115.144:70/0/recipes/Nachos