Alkahest my heroes have always died at the end

My father once told me about a military training exercise that took place for a month in Egypt. The only available food was early generation MREs. Everyone lost weight except for the cajuns – who all put on 10-15 pounds. Their secret was combining their MREs into a communal pot, add the seasonings they brought from home and produce something that you wanted to eat. Since MREs have 4000-6000 calories, eating the whole thing could easily make you gain weight.

I’m always reminded of this story when I make gumbo which I learned from my mother-in-law, one of the best gumbo cooks I’ve known. My family was transplanted to Louisiana and so we don’t have a traditional gumbo recipe, but my mother-in-laws works pretty well. Unfortunately, when K and I first started leaning vegetarian, gumbo got harder to make. At first, we would still eat chicken and turkey, so a chicken and turkey-sausage gumbo was okay. Unfortunately, turkey sausage is pretty bland. When we stopped eating chicken, it looked like our gumbo days were over (K doesn’t like seafood gumbo).

Two (relatively) new meatless products saved the gumbo. “Quorn” is a very passable chicken substitute made from mycoprotein (fungus) and Boca now has a meatless Italian sausage that works very well. With those two meat substitutes we made a very nice vegetarian gumbo tonight, that may have been close to healthy.

If folks want the recipe (meatless or with meat), just let me know.