Basuragomi's journal

[mathiverse]

Thanks for the cheese curd recipe from earlier. Also I think the picture with the blueberry cream pie is AI generated.

[guitarplayer]

that was as much a piece of cake to guess as the thesis progress.

[basuragomi]

Ha, the thesis progress was more along the lines of "really wonky, a quarter done and probably won't stand up to close scrutiny but there's at least an outline." Good thing I'm not on any deadline to finish!

March 2024 update

Grinding away. I won a student design competition and a scholarship (that I didn't even apply for!) which when combined equal half a year's expenses. I also am now officially self-employed, paying myself a salary from the corporation.

I made more yogurt tub screened flowerpots to replace some of the old ones that broke due to squirrel shenanigans. I also finally consumed all of my old business cards while drawing portraits! The end of project portraits is in sight!

I have also had a lot of success with physiotherapy. Had some shoulder pain due to a wonky sleeping situation and after two years of it slowly healing I went to physio. 10 weeks of exercises later and it feels 99% healed. No more swearing every time I stretch.

I read Empire of Cotton recently and I think from the author's viewpoint, they would cast ERE as people re-peasantizing themselves and conventional FIRE as joining the bourgeosie. Which makes the perennial "what would happen if everyone did this?" question funny because that's already happened...

Food prices seem to be dropping lately but this homegrown beansprout salad I developed during the lockdowns is still a super-cheap staple for me.



Beansprout Salad

Ingredients

500g beansprouts, blanched, chilled and drained (2 minutes in boiling water then rinsed with cold water)
1 tbsp/15 ml gochujang
1 tsp/5 ml sugar or molasses
2 tsp/5 ml fish sauce (substitute with soy to make it vegan)
1 tsp/5 ml soy sauce (works fine with low sodium)
1 tsp/5 ml sesame oil
1 tsp/2 cloves minced garlic
1/4 tsp pepper (white or black)
2 tsp rice wine vinegar
2 tsp/10 ml sesame seeds
1 green onion, chopped fine

Directions

- whisk together liquid ingredients, sugar, pepper and garlic, until oil and gochujang are well-mixed
- add beansprouts and toss to coat
- garnish with sesame seeds and green onion

[basuragomi]

April 2024 update:

Some new developments in the lentil jerky project.

1) New flavour, pepperoni! I switched to lactic acid for the isoelectric extraction step, and that fit well with pepperoni flavour. It's really tasty now, my guinea pigs are very excited about it. Thanks to the process changes, it's sustainably pepperoni-shaped and I don't need to use meat glue anymore either (though it still works well if you want a chewy product instead).

2) I've finally decided on a provisional name for the product! Although there's still a soft spot in my heart for the terrible working name "leperoni." Now to ask around for a trademark lawyer.

3) I bought a centrifuge. I didn't want a lab-grade one as the volumes they handle are too small, but even tabletop decanter centrifuges are way too huge. Solution: cream separators! They are relatively cheap, food-grade, built to handle continuous flow but still separate out solids. So I ordered a small one from Ukraine. It works quite well, cutting over 55 hours from the production cycle from both the thickening and dehydrating steps. This is good because a centrifuge was the biggest financial hurdle I was facing for production. They are, however, quite finicky devices.

4) I tried dry-grinding the lentils without washing. I was thinking of a coffee grinder for this use and on my walk home I came across a perfectly functional one being given away. On the finest setting it grinds them down to middlings/cream-of-wheat sizes. This turns out to be way larger than my food-processor wet setup, which dropped yield down to a measly 10% vs. 16% which I normally get. Not being able to wash the lentils first also diluted product quality as ultrafine starch from hulling stayed suspended in the solution. I'm going to try a meat grinder next as I can pass cold water through to keep things cool.

5) I got set up for lab analysis to confirm the protein content and shelf stability, now that the process looks more economically viable. Fingers crossed.

Recipe for this month: Eggplant and ham. Works surprisingly well together. Cut Chinese-style long eggplant into finger-length quarter-round batons, fry covered on low heat to avoid getting it mushy, throw in a chopped onion, add some oyster sauce and cornstarch slurry and a handful of cubed ham. Serve with rice.

[guitarplayer]

Wow seems to be coming together @basuragomi. How long have you been at it with the lentil jerky project, you reckon?

[basuragomi]

Hard to believe, but 2.5 years! My first post about it is on page 7. I've been gradually committing more and more time and money to it as I've passed each technical hurdle towards mass production. For me personally, it is incredibly convenient. I keep a bag of it around at school and when traveling, just stick a few chips onto a random carb and eat a carrot and you've got a nutritionally balanced meal that requires no refrigeration nor cooking, at a fraction the cost of jerky.

I've hoped all this time that someone else would have taken this idea and undercut me so I could buy it cheap without putting in all this work, but alas.