Bushwalk Australia

Hey all,
years ago a friend got me onto TVP (textured vegetable protein), it was our staple bush food. Directions were simple, ad boiling water, stand, add a stock cube, add spices, eat with pasta, rice, wraps...
Haven't seen it for years but I found Planet Organic Organic vegetarian mince. It is pretty much the same stuff - hooray. Half a cup is a huge single person serve, it absorbs twice it's volume in water! It takes on the flavour of stock cubes well. Its dry weight is light (22gms per serve). 50% protein but is not nutritionally dense food, so if you are doing an extended trip and don't have a spare tire or some love handles you might need to keep the meal portions LARGE.

I remember TVP - Sanitarium made it didn't they? It needed an awful lot of help to rise above bland tasteless spongy stuff. But it was light and filled ones belly, just needed lots of extra bits to make it palatable. Was OK in Spag Bog from what I remember. Can you still get the sachets of dried tomatoe paste?

TVP is still readily available my in Woolies but got to admit that no matter what I did with it I could never make it palatable for me and mine but to each their own
corvus

Maybe my tastebuds are half-dead? No real bad memories of TVP! Yeah, you have to dress all this stuff up an awful lot! I carry a range of spices with me. I'm still looking for tomato granules, I go with sachets of tomato paste at the moment

I bought a bag of it from Natures Works (health food shop) last year and have taken it a few times on walks. I take some cooked and dehydrated rice and veges, which take about 3 mins to cook, then add tvp and a packet of continental chow mien flavour (or half a packet for one person - a full packet gives two BIG meals). Let it stand with enough boiling water and it is delicious quite niceedible.

Dave.

ignavus davus wrote:I bought a bag of it from Natures Works (health food shop) last year and have taken it a few times on walks. I take some cooked and dehydrated rice and veges, which take about 3 mins to cook, then add tvp and a packet of continental chow mien flavour (or half a packet for one person - a full packet gives two BIG meals). Let it stand with enough boiling water and it is delicious quite niceedible.

Dave.

Dave I think your rice and vegies+chow mien flavour would be more edible
corvus

ignavus davus wrote:Dave I think your rice and vegies+chow mien flavour would be more edible

I think you'd be right there, Corvus. But then a 200g block of cadbury old jamaica would be more edible still, and I have been known to consume one of these as a meal! Seriously though, the TVP adds bulk and protein that makes you feel more full, even if it does taste like cardboard.

Shreeded brown cardboard tastes better, is lighter and cheaper than TVP.

TVP is not mince. Mince is made from meat.

How about dried tofu? I have bad memories of TVP

Most of the tofu I looked at needed a fridge? Can you freeze tofu (for the first night's meal)?

I have used dried tofu. I bought it from a japanese grocery shop. I think it had 6 cubes of dried hard sponge. I took half a pack with me on my walk on the Jatbula in NT.

So cooking it I boiled up some water and rehyed it for 20 mins, then cut it up into little cubes. Then added it to my veggies, sort of fried / scrambled egg and noodles and added a pack of japanese sauce. The texture of the tofu was horrible. Worse than dehy chicken,very spongey. But in with the rest of the dinner it added some bulk to my meal. If it wasn't for the sauce it would have been inedible. So would I bother again...no. Just have the veggie and egg with the noodles.

There are also the dried sheets of tofu. A bit like scrunched up paper. As tasteless as well but it doesn't have the sponge rubber texture. Wouldn't be easily packable as you are likely to end up with fragments of scrunched up tasteless paper

TVP= tiny vomit pieces