Would you like fries with that rat?

Much of the socializing on the Nathaniel B. Palmer revolves around meal times. The galley serves meals from 7:30-8:30, 11:30-12:30, and 17:30-18:30. Notice that the meal schedule is posted using 24 hour time. Many countries use 24 hour time on all schedules.

Question: At what time, using p.m., do you need to arrive to get dinner?

If you do show up at the right time for meals, here are samples of what may be served:

Sample Breakfast:

• Fruit – fresh or canned
• Eggs – any style or scrambled, breakfast burritos
• Cinnamon  Rolls
• Sausage or Bacon
• Hot or cold Cereal
• Biscuits
• Coffee and all sorts of Tea

Sample Lunch

• Salad Fixings/Fruit
• Soup
• Hamburgers
• Veggie-Burgers – (Homemade from lentils and walnuts-extraordinary!)
• Fries
• Veggies
• Assorted Desserts – Pudding, Cake, Tarts

Sample Dinner

• Salad Fixings/Fruit
• Jambalaya
• Meatloaf
• Vegetables
• Rolls
• Pound Cake, Chocolate Cake, Ice Cream
• Beverages

OK, now we’re to the rats.

Mid-rats are served from 23:30 to 00:30.  No, they’re really not middle size rats served to anyone confined to the brig.  Where does the name come from?

Fries at the "Southest Most Golden Arches" Punta Arenas, Chile	Galley hours

However, if you were to time travel back to “the good old days”, the sailors had to eat the real thing. In 1519, a man named Pigafetta sailed with Magellan on a voyage that eventually circled the globe. Pigafetta was the ship’s chronicler, that is, he kept a record of the voyage. Chroniclers were necessary in the days before blogging and myspace.com After passing through Drake Passage, the Magellan’s ships sailed for 89 days. The sailors somehow missed all the islands, so there were no stops for fresh water or food.  Pigafetta wrote,

“We ate only biscuit turned to powder all full of worms and stinking of urine which the rats made on it, having eaten the good. And we drank water impure and yellow. We ate also ox hides which were very hard because of the sun, rain, and wind. And we left them four or five days in the sea, then laid them a short time on the embers, and so we ate them. And of the rats, which were sold for half an ecu apiece, some of us could not get enough.”

Drawing of Antonio Pigafetta	Magellan Caravelle Link

YUMMY! (Alas, they probably did not get fries with their rats.)

Question: What is more nutritious, a rat or cheese?

For more about real life in the galley, go to Week 2 – Jobs at Sea – Cook

Name the juice