Documentation notes can sometimes note the most significant findings. Sometimes not. But it’s essential to submit. No matter how small the detail. It’s in those details, you find later, that everything seems to all make sense. Or at least that’s what I’ve seen in other notes in the libraries.

I thought about maybe not even submitting this one because who would know? Who would care? Really, what major scientific breakthrough would occur from me documenting my questionable cooking style? Everything matters, that’s the foundation of science and history, so here we are.

Food on Mars, huh? If you only knew.

Resources limit us. You can see that in the environments we build and in how we have to be selective about the plants we research.

We grow plants specifically for their nutritional and xenodxi density. For example, a small pepper can contain more vitamin C than an entire orange. A pepper plant is much easier and quicker to grow than an entire orange tree. Things like that keep everyone functioning at their maximum capacity in the smallest square footage possible.

With limited resources in terms of energy and square footage, we have limited selections. We have plans to grow the capacity of the growing areas. We always have plans to increase capacity, but everything takes time, resources, and energy, which means mining for those resources, finding them, and altering them in a manner for the appropriate application.  As much as we’d like to grow fast and have everything all at once so we can have a feast every night with cows and bowls of fruit from the trees of tropical regions, we are limited by the functionality of our constructs. It’s not practical. Not yet. I hope someday.

Let’s face it, Mars isn’t exactly your island vacation. Water is hard to come by, and oxygen outside of produced air isn’t exactly dense. Everything here that we have, we create. We find, we alter, we filter, we refine, we extract so that we can have the necessary means to have an environment suitable for growing what sometimes seems trivial but necessary foods.

Because of this, we maximize our process and our techniques in how we grow. We grow beans in areas of the soil that need a replenishment of nitrogen. We grow plants together that have been proven to coexist in their respective spaces. Growing plants alongside other very different xenodexi that contrast each help other so much. Sometimes, the disparity in their qualities leads them to opposing strengths that make them work so incredibly together.

I mean, when you think about it. That’s the magic of nature. If everything were all the same, there would be no balance. And you would have a surplus of just that one thing: the object of production. At that point, no one would need it, and we’d all be highly deficient in the negative space of our nutritional demands.

It always amazes me to look at the meticulous constructs of the synthesized environments.  I have been working in the conservatories, labs, and growing rooms for as long as I could run around here. There are formats that have to be followed for each synthesis. The rules and structures that came before me. They are there for a reason. They are not always applicable to every situation, they are altered to meet the need, but they are the foundation.

With one leading rule, and that’s to follow the nature of the situation for the solution.

Each harvest requires so much thought, time, planning, and work, which is another reason why our output is limited. We have a lot of output, but we meet the production criteria within a small scope.

That sure is a long-winded prelude to why my cooking could be better. But it’s the truth of the situation. We cook with what we have when we have it in the best way that we can. We don’t have a ton of room for distaste for certain things. You learn to get used to it because it’s what we have.

This is why I admired the pizza so much from a few days ago. The simplicity of ingredients in making such an amazing slice was brilliant.

Creativity, to work with what you have, is a challenge. I don’t dislike that challenge, but it exists. I actually think it helps us create in ways we wouldn’t have if the challenge did not exist. Sometimes, it creates complimentary flavor profiles that you would never imagine. The beautiful, sometimes aromatic, savory, sweet, tangy, crunchy, or smooth combination of ingredients that you would never try if they weren’t put in front of you.

But there’s definitely another side to that spectrum of skill… and sometimes, that’s where I land when I cook…Yeah.

I’ll be going to Zephyria in a week or so, where foraging and surviving off of what’s existing will be beneficial. So I’ve been practicing. It could be going better, but I’m practicing.

The first pic is my “beautiful” creation. But here are some pics of others who have done it a little better.