Amount | Volume | Ingredient | $ / day | Source | ||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1 | pill | Kirkland Signature Daily Multi | $0.03 | Amazon | ||
2.5 | g | ½ | tsp | Salt | $0.00 | Local bulk |
1.25 | g | 0.3659 | tsp | Choline Bitartrate | $0.05 | Amazon |
0.6 | pill | Calcium and vitamin D | $0.01 | Amazon | ||
0.2 | pill | Vitamin K | $0.00 | Amazon | ||
4 | g | 0.6575 | tsp | Potassium chloride | $0.13 | Amazon |
46 | g | 0.3108 | cup | Vital wheat gluten | $0.26 | Local Bulk |
100 | g | 1 | cup | Rolled Oats | $0.13 | local bulk |
56 | g | 4 | tbsp | Generic Smooth Peanut Butter (with Salt) | $0.19 | local |
45 | g | 0.194 | cup | Oil, olive, salad or cooking | $0.28 | local |
0.25 | ml | Sucralose to Taste | $0.02 | Amazon | ||
20 | g | 0.1786 | cup | Cocoa Powder | $0.11 | Local bulk |
159 | g | 1.0461 | cups | Corn flour, masa, unenriched, yellow | $0.15 | Local |
19 | g | Flaxseed Meal | $0.07 | Local Bulk | ||
Amounts for: Total Daily Cost: | $1.44 | Add Ingredients to Amazon Cart |
What is this all about
Inexpensive.
It's tasty.
- Chocolate/oatmeal/peanut butter flavor. Don't expect it to be the same as an ice cream milkshake (I don't want to mischaracterize it that way, but quite good nonetheless).
- The corn flour has a distinctive flavor that you'll notice, it's not a bad thing and you might like it. Let me know in the feedback.
- It's designed to use ingredients that you can easily obtain locally in reasonably small quantities.
- No 50 pound bags ordered online.
- Try it out without spending a fortune.
- Always have convenient access to what you need for the next batch.
- Some of the mineral supplements probably need to be ordered, but you don't NEED those to try it.
- It's designed to be prepared as a just-add-water powder.
- Scoop some into a glass and use an immersion blender to mix it.
- Make a meal and clean up in 30 seconds.
Preparation to Try it Out
(Note that you don't need all the pills and powders to see if you like it.)
Put it all in a food processor to make a powder.
- The various dry things absorb the oily things well enough to result in a powder.
- A blender can be used but you'll have to add water to get it to blend.
One cup of lightly packed powder is one meal.
Blend with enough water/ice to get the thickness you like.
Add sucralose to taste (aka Splenda)
Preparation for the Serious
How to measure the tiny amounts of powders and pills:
- Grind together twenty day's worth! (20 multivitamins, 4 vitamin K, 12 Calcium. Add 20 day's worth of Salt, Choline, and Potassium)
- Now you can simply measure out 1/20th of the resulting powder for each day. (10.35 grams)
- I use a mortar and pestle for grinding. (https://www.amazon.com/BIA-Cordon-Bleu-8-Ounce-Mortar/dp/B000GG6EDK/qid=1510554542)
If you want to make a LOT
- Food processors are too small. Mine is big and it still only makes 2 days at a time.
- The 5-gallon-bucket method with a mixer attachment driven by a hand drill will work fine, but it won't chop up the oats.
- You can solve that problem by using oat flour instead of oats, but it seems that oat flour isn't easily/cheaply available so...
- You can solve that problem by using your food processor to make oats into powder, then going ahead with the 5-gallon-bucket approach.
Storage
- I think the oils mixed into the powder will tend to oxidize quickly. This would make it taste funny, and might present some health issues. I'm still experimenting to see if this is an issue.
- It's a good bet that the freezer will keep it fresh for a very long time. It stays a powder when it is frozen, so you can just get a scoop and prepare it the usual way. I like that it is already chilled too.
- If all else fails, you can add the peanut butter and oil at the time you prepare it. Although I sorta wanted to avoid the extra step in preparation. If this is the case I'll probably change the recipe for the next version.
More Ingredient comments
"Local Bulk" means this item is at local grocery stores in the bulk foods section.
"Local" means it's a common enough item that you'll find it anywhere via retail.
I attempted to choose ingredients that are available locally and at low cost. You should't need to spend a lot of money to try this out and not much more to get everything you need. Much of what you need is likely to be around your kitchen already.
Kirkland Daily Multivitamin: The price of $12.69 reflects the price at my local Costco, which is cheaper than the Amazon price of $17-ish. You can leave this out to try out the recipe.
Choline Bitartrate: This ingredient is a supplement for right amount of choline. You can leave this out to try out the recipe.
Calcium and Vitamin D: I ordered this online but you can easily find similar products locally. You can leave this out to try out the recipe.
Vitamin K: You can leave this out to try out the recipe.
Potassium chloride: This ingredient is a supplement for the right amount of Potassium. You can leave this out to try out the recipe.
Vital wheat gluten: This is protein. It's basically the same as Wheat Protein Isolate but at a lower concentration of protein (and thus, a bit more like wheat flour).
Generic Smooth Peanut Butter: Grocery stores tend to have a store brand of peanut butter and they all tend to be the same. This is that. Mine is the WinCo Foods variety. Since the whole recipe is adjusted to account for the salt/sugar/etc content of the peanut butter, there is no obvious benefit to using more natural (expensive) peanut butter.
Olive Oil: It's nutritional characteristics are hard to beat, but it's expensive. I'll be reevaluating this to see if I can reduce the cost.
Sucralose to Taste: This is liquid sucralose via Amazon that I dispense with an eye dropper. This was convenient for me but isn't a common kitchen item or easy to obtain locally. You can substitute Splenda. (One drop = one tsp sugar) I started out using 24 drops, which is very sweet. The sweetness may make it better for your first time, but now that I've been eating it a while it seems like far too much. Now I put 10 drops in for a slight sweetness, but even that is probably unnecessary.
Corn flour: Get this in the grocery aisle with Mexican foods. It's normally used for making tortillas. A popular brand is MaSaCa. It shouldn't be hard to spot.