I just thought it might be fun to chat generally about making these proteins from scratch, and hear what people's experiences are with it.

Tofu:

I've been watching Will It Tofu videos lately and it inspired me to make some pumfu from scratch because it's a bit cheaper that way and you also get the byproducts which can be reused too.

It's really fun to do because watching the milk separate into curds feels like mad science or witchy or something. It really turned out great, except I only got about 2/3rds the amount of pumfu out of process as they said I should. The only thing I can think of is maybe I didn't blend it well enough, so I'm going to try some tricks to blend it better next time.

Anyway, you get 3 products from it:

1. Tofu - pumpkin seed tofu is so good, it's just expensive. It's just fattier than soy, so it really lends it to sausage-like preparations. I spice it like chorizo, pan fry it as a crumble and serve it over a tostada with black bean refritos and some veggies. I try not to overpower the flavor of the pumfu itself. It's killer.
2. Okara - This is the pulp leftover when you squeeze out the nutmilk. You can find recipes for it. A lot of people bulk out baking recipes with it. I combined it with a mashed potato and veggies and made a potato/okara pancake with it and dressed it with some thai chili sauce. The nuttiness of the pumpkin seed really came through, and it's really good. I'll need to add a bit of binder next time though, because it was pretty fragile. I've also heard you can rehydrate the okara, add nootch, and have a nice ricotta replacement, and tasting the raw okara, that makes sense. I may try it.
3. Whey - This is leftover when you press the curds into tofu. This makes a nice broth, and it added some depth to my instant ramen.

Seitan:

I've been making this from scratch for years. It's pretty easy.

I've tried both the "wash out" method where you wash the starch out of whole flour, and the method where you just start with gluten flour. I don't feel like the final product benefits much from the extra work of washing it out, so I just do it lazy-style.

There's lots of recipes out there for different mix-ins and different methods to cook. Personally, I like a very chewy, spongy, fluffy seitan, so I don't mix-in any other flours and then I boil it unwrapped in small pieces so it can fluff out a bit. Then I'll just do other prep from there. I love a nice fried buffalo seitan "wing."

I find that adding other flours (chickpea is common) makes a final product that's more like tofurky. That has it's place, but I'm a bit of a sicko and want the spongy stuff.

Tempeh:

I never made this from scratch, but if anyone has, I'd love to hear your experiences.

Has anyone out there experimented with this stuff? Going forward I'm definitely going to be pressing more weird tofus. I accidentally got too many red lentils a while back, so that's probably going to be my next tofu.

DENY DEFEND DEPOSE

Kindly reply with pleasing images of other ancient beasts.

I was sitting out front today, and neighbor1 came up and was excited to tell me neighbor2 got an eviction notice on her door. She was smugly happy to tell me all about it, because she hates neighbor2 because she doesn't cut her grass enough and doesn't socialize (literally, that's it).

I wasn't picking up on the energy at first and I reacted just being like "how awful, I hope she's ok." Neighbor2 is a working mom with a daughter, but neighbor1 is like "I don't know how you could fall behind on rent."

Anyways, neighbor1 eventually shifted her energy when she saw I wasn't matching it. But it's weird she even thought I might.

It's just so fucked, because it's not a rich neighborhood, and all of us have probably gotten an eviction notice before. I guess I'm just venting. Really feeling the cruelty in the world lately.

Say someone wanted to fill their bunker with HRT in case all trans healthcare in the US was blocked at some point, what would be the best way, and best resources for figuring out how to do that? These would be emergency backup, so wouldn't need to be a perfect regimen with injectables and progesterone.

From what I've read so far, for estradiol you'd want to store precursors, because those can store indefinitely, unlike vials or even pills. But I don't really know where those come from, or how you go from precursor to something that can be ingested. I would appreciate any resources that could fill that in for me.

I haven't really looked into t-blockers or t at all yet, because that wasn't as relevant to me. But if anyone's picked up any info on that, I'd love to know how it that would be done too, from a community support perspective.

I know our UK siblings are broadly dealing with this already, so I'd appreciate any input you have.

Sorry if there's already a megathread around for this somewhere already. I missed it.

(I'm not really sure what the boundaries of what can be discussed here. But for that reason, I'll just mention that this is research for cozy post-apocalyptic videogame about a trans woman with no access to healthcare because her warlord is pretty shit. It's hyper-indie and not even on itch, and the art is all in pastels, and has the best fishing minigame you'll never play. I definitely want REAL WORLD practical resources though for my research. Realism is key to the ludonarrative experience I want to deliver.)

Youtube has been serving me videos of these gadgets that are like "personal AI assistants" for people who want to carry around an extra device that is just chatGPT with a voice prompt. It's a super weird niche because we already have phones that do the same thing. It just seems like maybe they're just kickstarter scams for gadget nerds who are bricked up over AI.

Anyways, every time I see one of these things, my cursed brain goes immediately to "god, what if I was dating someone and they had just gotten this thing after having preordered the kickstarter 6 months ago. Now they're trying to find every possible excuse to use it in order to justify getting it."

We're at a restaurant and he's like, "what are the best qualities in a carbonara," or whatever.

Please help me escape this mental prison. Why am I doing this to myself?

"This is not an attempt to ban TikTok. It's an attempt to make TikTok better. Tic-Tac-Toe. A winner. A winner."

-- Rep. Pelosi

Edit: this is probably the wrong thing to focus on, but I'm increasingly upset they didn't do the alpha transparency right on their profile pic. It's 2024 ffs. More evidence this is boomer fueled.