Eating on the Healy by Gerhard Behrens At the beginning of the cruise, on July 23rd, I used the old saying, ÒWater, water, everywhere, not a drop to drink.Ó Then I described how the water evaporator makes fresh water for our ship. Two other sayings have come up in this first week on the Healy. The first is, ÒAn army travels on its stomach.Ó The second one is, ÒThe way to a manÕs heart is through his stomach.Ó The Coast Guard is not really like the army, and there are both men and women on this cruise, but the stomach part of those sayings is very true. Keep reading to find out more about the amazing kitchen on the Healy. First, some basics: there are 3 meals a day with an hour for each meal. Breakfast is at 7 am, lunch at 11 am, and dinner at 5 pm. A ÒmidnightÓ snack comes out at 11 pm for the crew or science team who couldnÕt make a regular mealtime. Mealtime is an important part of the day because it is a place to talk with buddies, a place to leave work behind, and a place to get fueled up for the next part of the day. Those are the basics. Nothing else is basic about the kitchen! There are two or three main courses for each meal, where you are likely to see just about anything. Breakfast could offer French toast, eggs, oatmeal, potatoes, cereal, and sausage. Lunch might offer chicken breasts, nachos, tuna sandwich, and beans. At dinner you could see squash, asparagus, pasta with shrimp sauce, pork chops. For any breakfast, add an assortment of fruit, bread, and drinks. At lunch or dinner, another choice is a huge salad bar, soup, and two or three desserts. At any meal, you can drink just about anything. What do I mean about anything? Well......... There are 97 different kinds of beef, chicken, or pork products from beef brisket to crab legs to turkey. How about some chicken basil sausage? We are in the middle of Baffin Bay; feeling like seafood? Choose from calamari, crab, flounder, halibut, salmon, scallops, 4 kinds of shrimp, tuna, or 11 others. Vegetables are important: 5 to stay alive! There are 42 different choices from asparagus to zucchini, including corn kernels, corn on the cob, and baby corns. Pasta is also an A-Z offering, 15 assorted kinds from angel hair to ziti noodles. Need to make some sauce to go with that? The cooks have over 50 different spices and bases to make things like Alfredo, Newberg, marinara, and pesto. Need something lighter? Make a salad by choosing from about 15 items then top it off with Blue Cheese, Caesar, French, Italian, Ranch, 1000 Island, or oil/vinegar dressing. Maybe you need just a snack. Choose from animal crackers, graham crackers, classic crackers, oyster crackers, Ritz crackers, saltines. Need something extra? How about tortilla chips, potato chips, Fig Newtons, fortune cookies, vanilla wafers, nutter butters, oreos, teddy grahams, or pop tarts. Still not rich enough or sweet enough? Chocolate almonds, chocolate bridge mix, gun drops, gummy bears, gummy fish (of course), hot tamales, jelly beans malted milk balls, snack mix, toffee peanuts, trail mix, yogurt almonds, yogurt fruit, yogurt pretzels, yogurt raisins. Maybe your sweet tooth comes at dinner. There is scooped ice cream, ice cream bars, soft ice cream, pastry, peanut butter cookies, pies (apple, blueberry, cherry, lemon, peach, pumpkin, and strawberry fillings), raspberry and strawberry cobbler, brownies, chocolate cake, corn bread, gingerbread, muffins, pound cakes, white cakes, yellow cakes, chocolate mousse. If life just needs to be simpler, then a bowl of cereal may do it. But which bowl? Apple Jacks, Captain Crunch, Cheerios, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cocoa Pups, Crisped, Fruit Loops, Frosted Flakes, Fruity Pebbles, Granola, Lucky Charms, Mueslix, Raisin Bran, Rice Krispies, Special K, Wheaties, Instant Oatmeal, Cream of Wheat, Grits, or regular Oatmeal. All this is going to make you thirsty. Skim milk, 2%milk, chocolate milk, cocoa, apple juice, cranberry juice, grape juice, guava/orange juice, lemonade, orange juice, Gatorade (2 kinds), 7-Up, Dr. Pepper, Mt. Dew, Orange Slice, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, root beer, unsweetened iced tea. Did I forget the hot stuff? Have a regular coffee or make it into a Cappuccino, French vanilla, hazelnut, Irish cream, Swiss mocha. There is tea, too, but there are too many to list. I need to add that meals are made from scratch, not just thrown into a microwave and heated up. A detailed menu goes up every week. The cooks are also sensitive to special food needs. The mess crew takes care of dishes and keeps the kitchen sparklingly clean. FSCS Karl Kaniss keeps this part of the ship in order. Speaking for myself, it might be hard going back home and feeding myself after a month of dining at Chez Healy!