Five Species Forever

Nathen poses the Five Species Food Game.

If you could eat only five species for the rest of your life, which would they be?

The rules are a bit vague. For example, do I need to personally prepare everything I eat from the raw food? Must the five foods cover all nutritional needs, or do they automatically and magically become nutritionally sound? Free to all diets are water, salt, and spices: should I assume neither tea nor chocolate count as spices?

I'll answer as best I can, using the "strict" rules (the answers to my three questions above are all "yes").

My five are goat, quinoa, mangoes, spinach, and Cucurbita pepo.

That fifth species includes zucchini and summer squash, my favorite storage squash (acorn, delicata, and spaghetti), and some pumpkins.

Choosing goat gives me milk cheese, yogurt, butter, and ice cream, as well as my favorite meat.

Quinoa works as a rice replacement, for both a dinner grain and a breakfast porridge. I could also make a pie crust with a slightly nutty flavor or decent pasta. Unlike most grains, it has a complete protein profile.

(If I get bored of quinoa as a dinner base, I can switch for a few days to stuffed zucchini, spaghetti squash “noodles”, or spinach salad as alternate bases.)

Mangoes are very healthy. I get fruit in my porridge or on my salad, my favorite flavor of fruit smoothies and lassi drinks, and my favorite flavor of fruit ice cream.

Spinach is healthy. It is my favorite among the greens, especially as a salad with some goat milk feta.