TVP!

A friend of mine just blogged about his experiments with textured vegetable protein (TVP), which brought back memories.

My mother's father was in the Air Force, and at some point in his life, either during his career or after, he acquired cans and cans and cans of various survival food items.  When he died, we inherited somewhere in the neighborhood of 25 to 30 gallon-sized cans of whole wheat, and a much smaller number of more sensibly-sized cans of other things: dried apples (tasty), vanilla protein powder to be added to milk (vile), and some TVP.  My mom tried cooking with it precisely once, if I recall; it just didn't work very well in whatever she was trying to make.  It and the vanilla powder got discarded quickly.

The wheat was a different matter.  My mother inherited, at approximately the same time as all this canned stuff, a hand grinder which was probably her grandmother's.  We tried to use it to grind some of the wheat, but I think it was probably meant for meat more than anything else, as it was just really hard work to grind the grain.  My parents also had a little electrical coffee grinder, colored beige and that shade of orange peculiar to the '70s.  It ground somewhere between a quarter and half a cup of stuff at a go, and my dad used it occasionally to grind up batches of the wheat.  He then added the wheat flour to muffins, pancakes, waffles, etc, and quickly learned to use some white flour as well as wheat, as the baked goods would come out uncomfortably heavy and dense if he used 100% wheat flour.

After storing the twenty-some gallon cans of wheat for something over twenty years (including taking them with us when we bought a house), my parents finally decided to get rid of the wheat.  I think they gave the wheat to a local food pantry.  I hope the food pantry was equipped to deal with the donation!