Homebrew Power Goop
- 7 and 1/3 tablespoons of honey
- 3/4 teaspoons of blackstrap molasses
- 1/10 teaspoons (just shy of 1/8 tsp) of table salt
Be sure to mix everything together well. It should make enough to fill a five-serving GU flask.
This recipe works nicely. You may see some bubbles on the surface, but that is just a natural occurrence of the molasses. Neither honey nor molasses needs to be refrigerated, so you can keep it in your pocket all day and even use it the following week. I probably wouldn't go much past a week, but it should still be good.
The nutritional content approximates: 25g carbs, 45mg sodium, 35mg potassium—with plenty of vitamins and minerals that you wouldn't get with the store-bought stuff. Another nice thing about the honey recipe is that it is all natural. Honey comes from bees that get nectar from flowers. Molasses is refined from sugar cane. As Homer Simpson would say, "Mmmmm, suuuugggarrrrrr." Salt comes usually from salt mines, but you can always buy sea-salt and use that.
My experiment did not end at just plain ol' goop. It was still raining out, so I thought back to something I read somewhere about a 4 to 1 ratio of carbohydrates to protein. I guess that is supposed to be a good thing, so I made a recipe for it too.
More: Fueling Up for the Ride
Honey Goop with a Protein Kick
- 6 tablespoons of honey
- 5/8 teaspoons of blackstrap molasses
- 6 and 3/8 teaspoons of soy protein isolate
- 1/16 teaspoons of salt
- 1-3 tablespoons of water
Mix everything together in a cup and add water as needed to develop a nice "goopable" consistency. Makes five servings.
I tried out some of this at the DINO 12-hour race, and it worked pretty well. The soy protein gave it a nice kick. I wouldn't leave this one in the sun for too long, though. Not that I've had any moss growing in it, but I would probably try to keep this one fresh.
More: 7 Tips for Fueling on the Bike
Now that I've freed the masses from cookie cutter carb-gels, I would like to say that this is not the end, but merely the beginning. These are just my recipes and, like the open source code of Linux, they are open for improvement and personalization. I haven't even started on anything with caffeine, but I imagine that you could substitute some espresso for the water or get wild with some ground-up ginseng supplements.
There is also the issue of flavoring. Could normal coffee flavoring work? Perhaps you can mix in some flavored Jell-O or Kool-Aid mix, or stay all-natural and mix in some lemon or orange zest. How about a jalapeño or two? The possibilities are endless.
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