As COVID-19 settled in and the outside food procurement grew fraught with uncertainty, I turned to something I managed to avoid for a very long time… cooking.

My solution to this problem was to geek out on my love of science, minimalism, and efficiency to create tasty, weird, nutritious food that doesn’t upset my stomach or other parts of my body. You may be wondering about that last one, but I can assure you, when you start playing with discrete chemical ingredients to make your food, having the wrong combination of foods can lead to a unique experience.

So the first thing on my list to make, because I find fake chicken nuggets from the supermarket so tasty, but a bit overpriced, was saitan. For those of you who don’t know what that is, I suggest googling it now… I’ll wait.

Okay, now that you know all about saitan, you can understand the rest of this. As part of this new commitment to my nutrition, I’m also following a very strict diet that limits the types of sugar and carbohydrates I can have. It is called a low FODMAP diet, and if you don’t already know what it is, you probably don’t need to.

I set out to make the very best saitan I could given my restrictions, and to make things easier in these strange times, I ordered everything on Amazon.

Stay tuned for some details of my cooking adventure… you know, if you don’t have anything better to do.