Lunch in space

After all these years of laboring under the impression that astronauts were still stuck in the bad old days of Tang, powdered applesauce and squeezable, room-temperature meat food, imagine my relief when I learned that the folks on the International Space Station got a shipment from Emeril Lagasse, as well as a chat with the chef himself.

I'm not sure which notch they've been kicked up to, but there you have it.

Other oddball food-in-space facts gleaned from NASA:

• Tortillas are an "easy and acceptable solution to the bread-crumb and microgravity-handling problem." Fuckin' A. I hate that microgravity crumb thing.
• Skylab had a refrigerator.
• Meals for astronauts are calculated to offer "100 percent of the daily value of vitamins and minerals necessary for the environment of space." OK, but whose calculations? The nine-grains a day people? Yuck.
• Meal planning begins with menu selections about five months before a flight and includes tests, revisions, production and storage that leads up to the launch. So, you're stuck with what you liked back then, as long as NASA says it is OK.
  
• Water generated by the space shuttle's fuel cells is used to rehydrate food. Cool!
• NASA makes no mention of dehydrated whisky. Drat.
• Moist towlettes are used for cleaning up.

You can read more about eating in space here.

After last night, when the butterfly lady and I gobbled up homemade whole-wheat samosas stuffed with kheema and sookhe aloo, I'd have to say that after a few months in space, eating a bunch of predetermined, precooked chow would make me very sad.

But the view would be impressive!