What’s within the soup? – The Unconventional Gardener

One of many (longer) tales I’ve been engaged on for some time now’s set in area. The principle character, Stella, is an area botanist who lives on her personal in an orbiting laboratory.

One of many worldbuilding questions I discover fascinating is:

The reply to that query tells you one thing about what individuals in your world eat, what they develop, their culinary traditions, and many others. For many individuals, soup is their consolation meals, or their go-to simple meal.

So, what’s in Stella’s soup? Effectively, the spacecraft she lives in is fairly self-sufficient, and she or he’s a botanist, so naturally she grows quite a lot of hydroponic greens. She’s not going to have sufficient area to be solely self-sufficient that method although, so there are some bioreactors that produce her bulk staples – protein (in all probability mycoprotein) and varied sorts of bioengineered algae that produce starches, fat and sugars.

The bioreactors and the required meals processing are managed by Stella’s useful AI companion – GAIA. GAIA is aware of what Stella wants, and what she likes, and retains issues just about beneath management. GAIA can even order long-life meals from Earth, however that’s costly, so it’s saved to a minimal.

So what’s in Stella’s soup? I believe her favorite can be a creamy chowder, with space-grown onions and potato, chunks of fish-like mycoprotein, and a handful of rehydrated sweetcorn kernels for a style of residence.

Until in any other case said, © Copyright Emma Doughty 2025. Printed on theunconventionalgardener.com.

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Many thanks!