I had a few objectives with this recipe:

• Gluten free
• Canola oil free
• Vegetarian
• Easily adapted to anywhere from 1,500 to 2,000 calories
• Low grittiness
• Good taste

The ability to use the same powder/liquid recipe for both my wife and me was one of the key driving influences for this recipe. My wife needs about 1,500 calories to maintain her weight, and I need about 1,800 to 2,000 calories. Using the nutrient profile calculator on this site and the government calculator on the USDA site leads to a non-linear change to necessary micronutrients. This is most easily accommodated by using a multivitamin, but there are nutrients that are not contained in the multivitamin that had to be handled by some tweaking of the recipe.

The gluten and canola oil were easy to avoid, of course, and it's fairly easy to make recipes vegetarian (but, in my opinion, much more difficult to make them vegan and still taste palatable to me). I do have the option of using fish oil, but obviously that's no good for vegetarians (in fact, the fish oil capsules have gelatin in the shell, and so they're not even strictly pescatarian, which is my preference) ... it's just that the algal oil capsules are so expensive!

There are a few flavors of the NOW Whey Protein Isolate, and they have very slight differences in their nutrient content. I've attempted to take a "reasonable" average of the nutrient labels for the five flavors (this doesn't include the unflavored variety). Basically, I took the numbers from the Cookies 'n' Creme and Strawberry labels because they have the largest serving size (from which I decided, possibly incorrectly, that their labels would be most accurate) and averaged them. I also took the phosphorus and magnesium measures from the unflavored variety as representative of the amount in the flavored varieties, even though these nutrients weren't listed for them, on the basis that it's unlikely that NOW Foods removed those nutrients when they added flavors. We've tried the Toffee, Strawberry, Chocolate, and Cookies 'n' Cream. My wife prefers the Toffee, and I prefer the Strawberry. We both like the Chocolate. Note that the Cookies 'n' Creme flavor does NOT appear to be gluten free (although I can't see anything that would contain gluten, and my wife, who is very sensitive to gluten, has had no reaction).

Another option is to use the flavorless version of the whey and either add your own flavors (e.g., LorAnn) or don't add any flavor (I haven't tried this, and I'm guessing that it tastes awful). You could also add fruit and make a smoothie. The flavorless whey is also cheaper, and you can buy it in larger quantities.

Dispensing the MCT oil is somewhat inconvenient, but with one of these: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00INYDVMO?psc=1&redirect=true&ref_=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00 I can simply add one pump for every 2.5 grams required.

I am very pleased with the lack of grittiness - this took a fair amount of experimentation, including cycling through sunflower seed powder, almond flour, finely ground flaxseed, and finely ground chia seed. The omega-3 is in capsule form partly because of the grittiness of alternatives, but also because the non-algal vegetarian sources are sub-optimal. I've included a choice of the Nature Made and Ovega-3 omega 3 (ω3) capsules ... the Ovega-3 capsules are vegetarian, but more expensive than the gelatin Nature Made capsules.

I took the vitamin K and selenium out of the capsules so that they can be added as powder. It's somewhat tedious to do this, but it allows easier control over the amounts, and i think it's more convenient than taking pills. If you are vegetarian and you absolutely will not have gelatin then you'll need an alternative for the vitamin K capsules.

The ascorbic acid (vitamin C) was added to mitigate the effects of the phytic acid in the oat flour on bioavailability of some of the minerals.

My wife has a bad reaction to iron, which caused me to select the One-A-Day Women's 50+ vitamins for her. However, this affects the levels for a couple of the micronutrients, which I've accommodated using annotations on the ingredient names for the Cal/Mag/D3 powder and the liquid iron. If you have no problem with a full dose of iron then I'd just use the Kirkland vitamins.

A note about the Palatinose (isomaltulose): Palatinose is much more expensive in the US than in some other locations, notably in the UK. However, the UK company (myprotein.com) that sells a reasonably priced package won't ship to the US, and their US site doesn't sell it. I found an alternative on eBay, although it takes a long time for it to arrive after ordering.

How to read the annotations: There are some slight differences in the recipe depending upon whether you're using the Women's One-A-Day or the Kirkland Signature vitamins. The values in brackets ('[' and ']') indicate the amount of the ingredient based upon whether the One-A-Day (W50) or Kirkland (KDM) multivitamin is being used.