Chicken or the Egg?

Well, technically, in this case, neither.

Let me introduce you to one of my recent purchases - chicken free chicken. And egg free chicken too.

I was getting a bit sick of soy mince. It's definately a staple, but it lacks "bite". I've been craving something with the texture of meat, something a bit more substantial. So I stumbled across the Realeat Chicken Style pieces in Holland and Barrett - priced at a reasonable £2.59. 

They can just be added to normal recipes so I decided to make a stirfry. Now this is still soy protein based, but the texture is less "spongey" and more "meaty" so on that front I was quite pleased. They come frozen so I just added them to the pan. They took a while to defrost and I wasn't quite sure whether they were done or not, but as theres no risk of salmonella, its not the end of the world.

Now the thing for me that I think vege companies should bear in mind is that meat in general does not come in convenient, even sized, cubes. I felt like I was eating lego. It was far too even! I think it would have a higher degree of authenticity to it if it was cut in uneven pieces rather than cubes. However, it did "brown" in the pan quite well.

I then tested out zero calorie noodles. What is this madness I hear you say? Noodles with no calories? Yep. Well, technically they are 8cals per 100g, but since you expend that amount of energy eating the stuff, it works out at 0 net calories. Sounds too good to be true. Sounds too good to be tasty.

The ones I bought were the Zero Noodles which at £1.99 weren't cheap (I began reminiscing about making 8p chicken noodles in my university dorm room). Basically the bottom line on these is:

"Zero Noodles are made from Konjac Glucomannan which is a natural soluble fibre produced by the Konjac Plant which is then mixed with water to produce the noodles."

I'd heard of other noodles made from yams, but these seem something different. I'd also heard them referred to as "glass noodles" which I suppose is quite accurate as they are semi-translucent and shiny. They smelt a bit "fishy" when I first took them out the packet, but that dissapated once they'd been cooked. I fried them in the pan, as this is supposed to be the better way to cook them, if you boil them they can be too slimey.

Have to say I was quite surprised - they weren't bad. Once they were mixed in with the vegetables, sauce and chicken-free-chicken, it almost passed for a normal stir fry. They are more akin to thin spaghetti rather than noodles which I feel are slightly softer, but they were definately not inedible.

The finished stir fry looked like this:

And half of that came to 410 calories. Not bad for all that protein. I actually felt uncomfortably full afterwards (but not too full not to stuff my face with yoghurt coated cashew nuts for dessert). 

So this meal was chicken free, egg free, dairy free, and partly calorie free. This my friends, is the future of food.