Fake Meat

Laid on the table were some ingredients that I had never bought before. There was a red syrup that was called cherry agar, that would gelatinize at room temperature to form a red colored jelly. There was also a black powder that was literally called bitter black powder, and tasted bitter with a hint of sweetness at the end. As well as many more such ingredients.

Taking out the gathered ingredients native, well 'native', to this planet, I put them to the side and brought out the plates I had bought from the stores.

Sitting at the side watching me work, Sazzy was fiddling with her personal terminal as usual.

For this hybrid dish, I was planning on making some sort of fake meat product to help alleviate some of the pressure that came with hunting. Or at least create a dish that is composed of all the nutrients that would naturally be found in meat.

To do this, I first pulled out my personal terminal and searched for the nutrient list of each international ingredient. Since chocolate was definitely going to be a popular local specialty based on the taste tests I did with Caroline, Josh and Tim, the Lupos should have enough income to afford these international ingredients at least once in a while. And all the ingredients I chose could be brought out of the AT center. I checked with Josh.

So in my notes, right next to the name of the ingredient and its nutrition, was its price.

I then put away my personal terminal and started mixing the ingredients together.

The meat in this world shared nutrients with the cherry agar, as well as the black powder. But it also shared quite a lot of nutrients with the sugar syrup and some of the fruits. So taking them all, I mixed different portions, ensuring that all had the necessary nutrients, and then brought out a portable steamer and steamed them one by one.

By checking on the food according to the color ribbon timers, I tried to closely replicate what kind of reaction would occur back at the cooking area in the camp.

The first combination was made from sugar syrup mixed with black powder and one of the fruits. By mashing the fruit, then thoroughly mixing it with the black powder to ensure homogenous spread, I then coated it with sugar syrup and left it to steam. Usually to make the fruit jelly it was steamed for 15 minutes, but this time it took around 10 minutes for the sugar syrup to gelatinize.

Taking out a part of it and leaving the rest to continue steaming, I took a bite into the new black colored jelly. The first thing that I tasted was a strong bitterness that made my face scrunch up. Followed by that was an equally strong sweetness that made the whole thing taste weird.

Leaving it to steam did not seem to solve the issue, as further steaming only changed the jelly like texture to a hard crispy one that gave the same taste. A failure.

Next I added a little of the sugar syrup and the cherry agar together. Immediately, before steaming, the two of them seemed to homogenize nicely to become a slightly pink shade of semi-liquid. Curious, I left it out for a while and noticed that it didn't gelatinize as cherry agar should. Instead it stayed a consistent semi-liquid that only barely retained its shape for a while, and could technically be poured out of its bowl.

Taking this curious mixture to steam, I only had to wait around 5 minutes before the semi-liquid turned more semi-solid and jelly-like. Taking a piece of it out, I bit into it to taste...nothing. It had no flavor.

Leaving it to steam more, at the 10 minutes mark, the mixture had a chewy and soft nature that resembled the texture of meat. Unfortunately, it tasted like nothing.

And steaming it past that just turned it hard as rock and quite inedible.

This was probably going to be the base for my fake meat. The texture was similar, so now we needed to fix the taste.

Picking several ingredients that have been known to not react with sugar syrup, like some of the fruits, as well as including the international ingredients since I had no data on them, I made several small batches and steamed them one by one.

For the fruits that didn't react, I created several versions of the mixtures for them. The first mixture had the fruits mashed, while the second mixture had the fruit juices squeezed from the fruit, and the third had the squeezed fruit without its juice.

The first version was pretty mediocre. The tastes didn't really mash well. The second one was slightly worse and was oversteamed, making it a little too hard. But it was still majorly tasteless. Another failure. The third one was passible? It had a slightly stronger taste then the other versions before it but it wasn't really what I was expecting.

After trying several more versions with different ratios and different fruits, it seemed as if the dish was still incomplete.

Choosing one of the versions, a mixture with two squeezed fruits added, I used that as the 'base' for the next stage of the experiment.

Nutrient wise, it was still missing a couple of nutrients, however getting a good product was hard enough. Getting a product that was one to one with actual meat in terms of nutrition seemed to be too much to do in such a short time, so I allowed myself to miss out on some of the nutrition.

Using this new base, I added some more ingredients into it, steaming them one by one and tasting them to find just the right ingredient with just the right portions.

Since the sugar syrup reacts differently when steamed for different times, it was quite complex to balance the reactions between the many ingredients and the base.

After hours and hours of failed products, I finally ran out of international ingredients and had to call it a day.

The good news was that I had narrowed down the list of ingredients to a quite short list of ...5 ingredients. With around maybe 20 different combinations that I still had to check out and find out the ideal proportion for each ingredient.

I piled the dirty dishes and carried them over to the small sink in the corner of the room. Sazzy who was lazing on the bed sat up the moment I moved away from the table.

[Are you done experimenting?]

"For today. I need to order some more ingredients for tomorrow since I ran out. Also I think I need to bring quite a lot of ingredients back to the camp after tomorrow as well. But I think I'll try to cut down the amount of ingredients that I bring back to the camp. Looking at the progress, I think I can stream maybe around 2 to 2.5 weeks later. If I'm lucky it'll be sooner than that since I think I have a better idea of what to do compared to the time at Aquarius."

Sazzy nodded her head as she fiddled around with her personal terminal again.

I washed the dishes quickly, since none of the ingredients were oily or stuck easily to the plates, except for the sugar syrup. Then I placed them on the dish rack and headed over to Sazzy.

"You have been using your personal terminal quite a lot. What are you looking at?"

Sazzy looked up as I came over, and then showed me her personal terminal. It was the social media page that most Jolt livestreamers used. Chitter.

At the page, there were many chirps, which were what the posts were called, about the livestreams that I had previously held. As well as posts and pictures that included some of the behind the scenes experiments of those livestreams. The most recent chirp was a picture of the empty dishes before I stacked them to wash.

[I've been updating your Chitter, making sure that people feel more involved in what you are doing as well as promoting the channel occasionally.]

Pulling up Chitter on my own personal terminal, I scrolled through the comments to the chirps and saw a lot of people being excited about the upcoming stream. A lot of them were asking when it would be held, and more were sending drooling and thumbs up reactions to the chirps.

While scrolling through the page, there was a notification that a new chirp was made from the account. Refreshing the page, Sazzy had replied to one of the comments to how long was the next livestream with 'Chef says that it'll be in 2 to 2.5 weeks. Everyone better stop drooling or you'll drown yourselves.'.

Refreshing the page once more, and a lot of comments were of people repeating 'Yes Boss!' in quick succession to each other. Like some sort of cult.

[It'll be good if you could chirp on the account once in a while. Everyone knows that I'm manning the account for you right now, but being closer to them won't harm anybody.]

I stared at Sazzy as she said those words.

"How do you get along with people?"

Since young, due to my family circumstances, I never really had any friends. I didn't even know how to make friends. Interacting with so many people seemed a little overwhelming. And my diagnosis later just worsened the problem.

Looking at me, Sazzy gave a small smile.

[Then you just have to learn! Take small steps at a time, don't push yourself too hard but don't become complacent, and you'll have several friends in no time.]

Gesturing to the seat beside her, Sazzy patted it and called me to sit down. She then put her hands on mine.

[I think we can put your MDVA behind us. It hasn't acted up once since you transferred into this world. And it won't act up ever. So we should focus on moving beyond it.]

Looking at Sazzy's calm eyes, I saw a strong determination within them and broke eye contact.

"You can't be so sure about that. Unless when transferring to this world you did something to my body."

Speaking of which, the constant restlessness and intense desire that was characteristic of MDVA was missing. I had never realized it since I had spent the last 20 years actively ignoring it. Was my body altered?

Whipping my head back to Sazzy, she still had that small smile on her face.

[Technically, this body isn't your original one. We can't transfer physical objects. The body you have right now was synthesized based on your original body. However, since physics and chemistry aren't one to one across worlds, some liberties were taken. Your diagnosis was one of them! Although even if it wasn't, we would still remove it anyway.]

As Sazzy talked, her smile grew wider.

[So you don't have to worry about that!]

"...And you tell me this now?"

A little taken aback that it took her 3 months to tell me something this important, I feigned anger at her. But all I felt was relief inside. However, Sazzy's smile didn't disappear and she exaggeratedly responded back.

[Well you didn't ask! Besides, I couldn't really find the right timing to tell you. And I certainly don't want to be the one to start this conversation.]

Folding her arms with a smile, Sazzy then directed our attention back to my personal terminal screen.

[Since that terrible diagnosis is out of the way, you should try to widen your horizons a little more. If anything goes wrong, not that it will, I'll be able to solve it!]

I glanced at Sazzy and thought to myself that her words sounded like a flag. However, saying it out loud would probably make it worse, so I kept quiet and opened Chitter. Clicking the 'new chirp' button, I paused on that page.

I didn't know what to write.

Sazzy leaned over from beside me and saw my hesitation. Immediately, she advised me on several ways I could write what I wanted to say, and we started a consultation appointment on how to act online.

After around 20 minutes of talking, I finally managed to draft up a thank you note for the audience that were following me. Showing it to Sazzy, she read it over a couple of times before nodding. Then I finally posted it.

Immediately there were a lot of commenters cheering that I was finally free, or that I finally found out that there was a Chitter. I picked a few comments to reply to with the help of Sazzy, and I spent the next couple hours on Chitter before we really called it a night and prepared to sleep.