I want to answer another common question that I am getting through the 'Ask the Team' tab, what do I eat while in the boat? It is a great question, and I presume the answer will change as weeks go by. Imagine you are at home and someone tells you to go buy groceries for feeding fifty people for seventy days, and that you will not be able able to go back to the store in those seventy days.
Tag along with me and I will show you around the galley. I hope you have eaten something; if you have not, and do not have food nearby, I suggest reading this journal at a later time. And do not mind too much the galley's hours, even when closed, the galley has a lot of food to offer. ¡Buen provecho!
Door to the galley with the rules of the game
I can say that on day 8 aboard the Palmer we eat extremely well. Here is the menu for today's breakfast, lunch and dinner. We have lots of choices, as you can see. Ale and Nestor, our two chefs, prepare not only one meal every meal, but three or four! And they are very accommodating; they are cooking for the vegetarians aboard as well as for a gluten allergic person.
Today's menu. How we suffer.
There is always something good for everyone for breakfast. Ale is ready to make an omelette, fried eggs, scrambled or poached. We have the standard bacon, sausages, pancakes or french toast… My standard fare has become some oats, pancakes or french toast and couple slices of bacon. If the seas are clam I exchange the oats for an omelette.
The line starts here for lunch, with the salad bar, where there has always been fresh lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, olives, carrots, radishes and more. I keep hearing I should eat the freshies while they are here, that soon we will be missing them. I am curious about until when will Nestor and Ale be able to serve fresh vegetables.
Fresh salads every day! until now at least...
Next, the warm dishes. I found Ale putting the finished touches to the grilled congrio, which turned out to be superb. Congrio, a fish that I did not know, is a white flesh fish from South America; it reminded me of cod.
Ale putting the finishing touches to the congrio with some parsley garnish
There is always a soup, which I thank enormously because I am a soup guy. I give extra thanks when they make the sea food chowder, like today. The picture does not do justice to it, but it was yummmy!
Wonderful seafood chowder.
Here are the rest of the lunch warm dishes,
Warm dishes for lunch
and the dinner. The raviolis were the popular selection today and did not take long to disappear. They were delicious. The picadillo was outstanding as well.
Warm dinner for dinner under a slower (and accidental) picture to try to capture the motion of the boat.
Do not forget the freshly baked bread. Yummy! still warm, it is delicious.
Daily fresh baked bread
Let us get a drink before we go to find a seat. I prefer regular water, but there is something for everybody. Sodas, milk, juices, coffee, teas, you name it.
Drinks
and more drinks
Now we are ready to join the camaraderie of our shipmates. Some are already eating, and some more will keep trickling as they finish sampling the last rosette that came aboard.
Shipmates at the mess room
Once we have eaten our way and chat with our shipmates, let us go back for the always changing and never ending big supply of desserts. Cakes, cookies, custards, ice cream, cobblers, pies… there is no end to it!.
Amazing array of desserts
We do have an exercise room, by the way. I will show you that another day. I do not want to get distracted from the food. As I said before, you will always find food in the mess room no matter at what time you show up. Sandwiches are left on a refrigerator, and there are more sandwich fixings at another one. There are always cereals, leftover desserts and fresh fruits, although I do not know until when we will the fruits.
Sandwiches on the fridge
Boxes of cereals available at any time
If you paid close attention to the door sign at the beginning of this journal entry, you might be asking yourself, what is a mid rat? Why is the galley open from 11:30 pm to 1:30 am for the mid rats? That is the fourth meal of the day. What happens is that the scientists work 12 hour shifts in the boat. A shift starts at midnight and does not end until noon. So somewhere on the boat people wake up between 10:00 pm and 11:00 pm who might have missed dinner. They can show up for the mid rat meal and have a nice breakfast.
You might also be curious about the kitchen and the areas where they store all the uncooked ingredients. Nestor allowed me to tour the kitchen. I got a head covering, mandatory if you were to enter the kitchen, and snapped a few pictures.
Beautiful galley
More of the galley
Then found my way to the very front of the boat in one of their storage areas. Look at all the food! We do not need to go to the grocery store because the grocery store came with us. I hear that somewhere down in the guts of the ship there is another dry storage area with more food. ¡Imagine that!
And before you go out there judging our eating down here, let me remind you that food is the basic comfort for sailors. We work, sleep and eat.