This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Health & Fitness

Navy Tales: Life and Food Aboard an Aircraft Carrier, Part 3

Life on a Navy carrier with emphasis on the mealtime experience.

I think this will finish up with breakfast, and move along to lunch, and beyond. I am going to post the same picture of the mess deck that was on part 2, just to remind you of what the mess deck looks like. On the right you see an array of coffee, milk, water, and bug juice dispensers. It looks like there is also some fruit. I can't see it, but there would also be a place with butter, jelly, and things like that.

At least when I was in, the ship got their butter in large boxes of the little pats of butter (you know, about an inch square and a fourth of an inch thick?) that were frozen so they would keep a long time. The only problem was, they got them out of the sub zero freezer about three minutes before they were needed. They were put out in a block, and had to be chiseled apart to get just a few. And if you tried to put one on toast, you couldn't spread it. By the time it thawed, the toast was frozen.

Another fun breakfast adventure was cereal. There was usually a selection of those small boxes with a serving of various kinds. We will come back to the cereal in a minute.

Find out what's happening in Sunset Hills-Crestwoodwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

A lot of the time, there was fresh milk at breakfast, but after we had been out at sea for a good while that ran out, or went bad. There were two other options for milk: powdered milk, and sterilized milk. The powdered was not very good, but some people could drink it. The sterilized was, supposedly milk that was treated with a high dosage of radiation so it could never spoil. It was TERRIBLE! I can't remember anyone who drank that. But...there was one thing it was used for.

The cereal was sometimes rather old by the time we got it, and sometimes it had little bugs in it. Some people found this out after they had eaten most of a box. Some very ingenious person found a way to make one good things out two bad ones though. (And the word spread.)  You open the box of cereal, dump it in a bowl. Pour on some sterilized milk. Stir it around a bit and the bugs would float to the top. Scoop out the bugs and hide them in the empty cereal box. Pour out the rest of the milk, and eat the cereal with lots of sugar...it tasted fine.

Find out what's happening in Sunset Hills-Crestwoodwith free, real-time updates from Patch.

Well, now that everyone is sick, I'll stop for today, and move on to lunch, and beyond for the next blog.

 

 

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?

More from Sunset Hills-Crestwood