I used to be within the navy for eight years, and I’ve had food from navy destroyers, plane carriers, submarine tenders, and shore responsibility galleys.
When a ship is in port, it all the time had loads of contemporary food on board. Proper earlier than a ship pulls out to sea, it’s replenished with new food and drink.
If you happen to going to be out to sea for some time, you’ll begin to lose a number of the issues on board you’re taking as a right. Contemporary milk is often one of many first issues to go. They substitute it with powdered milk, and it doesn’t even come near actual milk.
Do not get me flawed, the food on the ship is definitely fairly good, and also you get loads of it!
If you end up in port, you’ve gotten entry to the freshest meals the navy has, similar to your hometown grocery retailer just about.
Once you get up within the morning, you go right down to the galley, and get within the chow line. There is likely to be 10 guys in line by the point you get right down to eat, and breakfast is often served many of the morning, as a result of not everybody can eat on the similar time, and it will be over crowded then. On smaller ships, like destroyers and frigates, you often would have four meals a day. Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner and Mid Rats, a small meal that make round midnight for those who are nonetheless hungry, and need one thing to eat.
On the destroyer I used to be stationed on, we’d additionally usually have cook dinner outs proper on the fantail. We all the time had a 55 gallon drum that was minimize in half, and somebody from the Provide Division can be frying cheeseburgers, and that was all the time good, even out in the course of the Indian Ocean, we’d be having a cook dinner out.
For breakfast, you may often order your eggs to order, there might be a cook dinner or 2, that take requests for the way you need your eggs made, that they had a rule not over 5 eggs, I often solely had 2 more often than not, and I might inform them I need a ham & cheese omelet with 2 eggs, after which after I get my eggs, I transfer down the chow line, and get no matter else I wish to go together with that, bacon, sausage, similar to a small buffet actually.
Often on Fridays, if we had been in port, we’d have steak and lobster tails on Fridays. I by no means even actually had a lobster tail till I joined the navy. My dad by no means preferred sea food once I was a child, so we by no means had it in our home.
Lunch and dinner had been often like a buffet additionally, absolutely anything that they had, was a line of fine food, and you’re taking what you need, and you’ll all the time get a brand new tray and return in line once more, if you’re that hungry.
The plane provider I used to be on, was truly manner too huge of a ship for me, and I used to be so glad I solely needed to keep on it for two weeks. There food was good additionally, and it had 2 galleys, in order that one was all the time open, if the opposite closed for cleansing or no matter cause.
When you’ve gotten roughly 5,000 individuals on board, you higher have a spot for them to eat on a regular basis, similar to a on line casino, if the ship had slot machines on it, it will be fairly near the identical ambiance of a buffet.
Once I was in transit someplace out within the Indian Ocean, I needed to go to Saudi Arabia to get on a flight to Italy, and a helicopter flew me and about 5 different enlisted guys out to this USNS ship, and we had been supposed…to simply trip the ship for two days, till we received off the ship. That they had an enlisted 1st class yeoman that had his personal stateroom, which on an everyday navy ship, simply the officers get.
This was a USNS ship, which meant it had civilian staff, and the navy personnel was help for them. After we ate of their dinning room every day, a waiter would come to our desk, and he would take your order. I believed to myself, you need to be kidding me, these guys are carrying civilian garments, and a waiter is taking their order, and I can not even consider that is actual. They provide you a selection of two picks, kind of like on an airplane, and so they carry you ice cream as dessert, and I believed that was unreal.
A lot of the civilians on that boat weren’t cool just like the navy guys, most likely as a result of they thought the navy labored for them, which on that ship, they positive did, and I may consider a number of methods to avoid wasting the navy a ship load of cash!
Submarines get a number of the greatest food within the fleet. They guys are underneath water generally for thus lengthy, and will you think about if they didn’t have good food?
They’ve a drink they name bug juice, which is absolutely Kool-aid or a fruit punch drink. You higher get used to consuming bug juice, for those who like one thing to drink together with your meal, after the contemporary milk runs out.
Right here is likely one of the craziest issues I’ve witnessed on the ship, and each ship does it! It’s such a waste of fine food, however I suppose you may see the way it does shield the states from pests and bugs, however does it actually?
When ever you’re going out to sea far, you often cease by Hawaii to get new shops, as they name it, which implies you might be stocking up the ship with contemporary food and meat and stuff like that.
As you journey the world, after which are returning, earlier than you cease by Hawaii, you need to throw all of the food that might have any likelihood of getting any kind of bug from one other nation in it, so we’ve a working celebration, of possibly 20 guys, and the job is to make a line from the food fridges, which a ship has a number of decks of them, all with elevators to make all of it collectively, and we unload all of the food, 50 pound luggage of name new onions, tons and plenty of them, huge packing containers of lettuce, numerous packing containers of it.
We throw nearly all the things that is left within the coolers overboard into the ocean, and all the blokes simply cannot consider we’re throwing all this good food overboard, and we wager loads of sharks are following the ship, and may you think about how a lot food an plane provider would throw over board. An plane provider has a spot on the again of the ship for throwing trash into the ocean, however solely when you’re out 50 miles or extra to sea, so it doesn’t wash up on the shore, and so many issues are thrown within the ocean, apart from food. You may sit and smoke a cigarette, and simply watch all of the folks that have trash to throw within the ocean, fairly weird in a manner, however you may’t have it pile up on the ship.
I must say general, the food within the navy is sweet, possibly even nice, I might of by no means thought it will be as good and plentiful because it was, and a few days after being out of the navy, I swear their spaghetti remains to be the very best I ever had in my life!
