What is this all about

• Inexpensive.
• It's tasty.
• Chocolate/peanut butter flavor.
• It's designed to use ingredients that you can easily obtain locally in reasonably small quantities. (With variable success.)
• 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 BIG glass and use an immersion blender to mix it.
• Make a meal and clean up in 30 seconds.
• Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio of 2:1.

Preparation to Try it Out

• (Note that you don't need all the pills and powders to see if you like it.)
• Mix all the stuff together.
• Blend with enough water/ice to get the thickness you like. (A hand-held immersion blender works nice.)

Preparation for the Serious

• How to measure the tiny amounts of powders and pills:
  • Grind together many day's worth! (i.e. 20 days = 20 multivitamins, 4 vitamin K, 20 Calcium. Add 20 day's worth of Salt, Choline, Potassium, etc)
  • Now you can simply measure out the right amount of the resulting powder. (1/20th of the powder per day, or... all of it for 20 days of mix)
  • I use a mortar and pestle for grinding. (https://www.amazon.com/BIA-Cordon-Bleu-8-Ounce-Mortar/dp/B000GG6EDK)
• Mix the peanut butter and oil together and store it separately.
  • If you mix it into the powder the oils will tend to oxidize in a few days.
  • Consider using an oil dispenser so you can weigh out one meal's worth of oil mix when you eat.
• Mix everything else together.
  • Put it in any sealed container large enough and shake it. I use a 5 gallon bucket.
• Making meals:
  • I find it easiest to put a giant glass beer mug on a food scale.
  • Pour in the oil before the powder. It stops it from sticking to the bottom of the glass when you mix.
  • Add ice and water to get your desired thickness.
  • Use an immersion blender to mix it.

Storage

• The mix will store for a looong time as long as you keep the oils separate from the powder. Months, I bet. But I haven't studied it well enough to put a precise time period on it.
• After mixing with water, it stores well for at least a day in the refrigerator.

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.

• Flaxseed meal: This is used to provide the right amount of the ALA variety of Omega-3.

• Potassium chloride / Potassium citrate: These supplements are used in combination to achieve the right amount of Potassium and chloride. You can leave this out to try out the recipe.

• Vital wheat gluten: This is the primary protein source. 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. Peanut butter isn't just tasty, it's used to get just the right amount of Omega-6 fatty acid.

• Corn flour: Carbs. 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. It has a low niacin content and is used in proportion to keep the amount of niacin correct.

• Rice flour: Carbs. It has a low sulfer content and is used in proportion to keep the amount of sulfer correct.

• Sunflower Oil (High oleic): This is absolutely the best oil I've ever found. It is a special sunflower oil that is very high in good fats and very low in bad fats. That makes it easy to reserve your healthy amounts of "bad" fats for delicious things like peanut butter. Furthermore, I am somewhat skeptical that it's even POSSIBLE to keep your Omega-6 consumption at the right level without using this as a source for some of your fats. It's certainly possible to keep the Omega-6 to Omega-3 ratio right without this oil (and maybe that's all that matters), but the actual volume of Omega-6 seems to always be at least 300% of what it should be. You CAN find high oleic sunflower oil locally, but it will probably be a bit expensive. Look in health food sections.

• Cocoa: It's suprisingly good for many things (magnesuim, fiber) and it's also chocolate.

• Kirkland Fish Oil Supplement: This is a suggestion that I think is a very good one. This provides EPA and DHA Omega 3 fatty acids that your body isn't particularly good at making from ALA Omega 3 (which you still need, regardless). Science hasn't come to any clear conclusions about it yet, so it's not a sure thing.

• Sugar: Carbs. Sweetness.

• Psyllium Husk Powder: This is to supplement the fiber content. It's very difficult to get enough fiber from other ingredients (like grains) without having other negative side effects (like an overdose of niacin). This is particularly true for reduced calorie versions.