Travel Rations Set for Adventurers Leftovers

 Come clean, Dungeon Meshi Manics.  Did you spend the last week eating nothing but jerky?  Are your floors covered in discarded wrappers of both national and regional brands?  Are the mascots photorealistic animals or overly aggressive cattle?  It's fine! It's fine!  If you are enjoying your all jerky diet who am I to say boo?  Just, I'm a little worried about your beef sweats.

AH!  Sorry, sorry.  I'll back off.  You chomp away but this does put me in the mood to talk about something basic when it comes to eating. Nutrition! Come on, don't make that face again.  This will be fun!  And not judgemental.  As you know this is a food positive blog.  I feel that you should eat whatever you want whenever you want.  Nobody has the right to tell you otherwise.  Something fewer of you may know is that I'm a running slime.  In order to keep in top shape I have to pay attention to my nutrition during training seasons.  I find it fun!  Finding out what foods help me go faster longer is a neat process. Who am I kidding.  It's mostly finding out what foods don't upset my tummy during a run.  I'd say 90% of nutrition is finding out what doesn't upset your tummy.  But how does it all apply to eating dungeon food?  Remember the meal from last week, DMMs?  Not just the jerky but the whole meal.  Here's a reminder.

Pretty simple but is it enough to keep an adventurer going?  What do you think, DMM?  Could you fight a sea monster after this?  Why don't we break it down and go from there!  See, fun!  Where to start?  Why not with what we made last week.

Salt-cured meat.  There it is, all the protein! This stuff is what your body needs to basically rebuild itself.  Blood, bones, cells, hair?  Gotta have protein for that.  Bonus is you get some vitamins and minerals from the meat.  Stuff like ZINC!

I like that I don't even need to put in text for this image.  The other great thing about the salt-cured meat is that it is seriously shelf stable.  This will last you a good month before going bad.  And only Senshi spends more than a month in the dungeon.  So salt-cured meat is a great start.  Next, we move onto the OTHER protein high food. Mixed nuts and dried fruit!

"This is just bar food, you malevolent muck!" I can hear you write to your school newspaper.  Now, now, gentle DMM.  Don't overlook the noble nut and dried fruit mix.  Nuts have not just protein but they are loaded with calories!  I know that terrible people make a big deal about foods having calories but end of the day you need those to do anything.  If you are going to be walking and fighting monsters all day and night you'll be thankful you have those calories.  On top of that you get fiber and even more vitamins.  We'll talk fiber later so why don't we look at the dried fruit.  Vitamins.  The stuff that makes the stuff in you work.  That's what you'll get from the dried fruit.  That and a nice flavor.  Personally, dried apricots are my favorite!  I can eat those by the bagful.  Which is good because dried apricots are high in the one vitamin most dried fruits lack. Vitamin C.  Dig this, DMMs.  Vitamin C is a very fragile vitamin.  Even fruit with high normal Vitamin C level will lose most of it during the drying process.  And you need that Vitamin C, trust me.  As sea going weirdos found out the hard way a lack of Vitamin C leads to one of the worst illness, Scurvy!

Nih History Time!  How do I know anything about scurvy?  Gather round, DMMs, and I shall tell you a tale.  The year was 1998.  A friend of mine had the one two punch of having a weak stomach and being a picky eater.  Food just did not agree with the guy!  So you tried to live off Mountain Dew alone.  Sure, he did eat when he could but most of his diet was the Dew. Eventually joint, muscle, and tooth problems meant a quick trip to the hospital where the doctor on staff got to make a diagnosis that had to make him wonder the exact year.  To this day I'm surprised the doctor didn't say, "Yar! Ye be hav'n scurvy!"  My friend was given an injection of the vitamins and told to take supplements.  He continued to drink Mountain Dew but now his skin looked better!  Years later as we were about to graduate a new member of the college role playing group was telling this crazy story he had heard about a member that got scurvy.  My friend meekly admitted that it was him.  He had become legend!  

Back to the meal, what about the wine?  Can't that help with the Vitamin C?

Nope!  You have the same problem the drying process if not worse.  The process of making the wine will take out most of the Vitamin C.  I'm assuming that Dungeon Meshi takes place in a world where water is still questionable so they are packing wine instead.  This is something that bothers me, DMMs.  This is a magical world so you'd think a wizard could just go "Mecca lecca hi, mecca hiney ho!" and purify the water.  I guess that's just not common in Dungeon Meshi?  Or maybe a high level spell?  Either way we have to assume they are drinking wine for safety...and not because they're alcoholics.  Now on to the best part of the meal. The bread!

I'm a bread slime, DMMs.  I know the old saying "Slime cannot live by bread alone" but what a sad way to be.  If it were possible most of my meals would be bread.  *sigh* Dreams are fun but let's get back to the real fictional world.  How is this bread helping the adventurers?  From here is kinda looks like a dark rye to me.  This will get you that fiber, DMMs.  Fiber is what your poor stomach needs to digest all the other stuff you just put in it!  Plenty of carbohydrates and calories to boot.  The greatest thing the bread brings is you can put the meat between two slices and make the ultimate meal; The Sandwich!  Trust me, DMMs, a good baker is worth their weight in gold.

All in all, this is a pretty good meal for dungeon diving.  Sure it's nowhere near as fun as when the gang is eating but this will keep them doing.  I know I gave it a hard time last week as being gas station food which was not fair and a bit hypocritical.  When I was younger I traveled a lot more than I do today.  Gas station food always helped me get back to where I was going!  So hopefully you enjoyed this simple meal, DMMs.  Be sure to come back next week.  We'll be eating something far hotter and way richer!