Reminds me of an old MEBA contract that stated there were to be two entrees per meal and then went on to list what was NOT an entree, chitterlings and chicken necks among them. Now the only reason chitterlings and chicken necks were listed among other unsavory items which were not to be allowed was some owner tried to pass them off as proper food.
Disclaimer: I have had a few good chitlin’s.
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It was joke lighten up.
Your post reminds me of a captain I used to work for. He admittedly was addicted to junk food. He would grub shop and come back with all kinds of junk.
I found the workaround was to give him a very detailed grub list. He would come back with everything on the list.
If you said just go grub shopping you got junk.
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I was working for an American OSV company operating in S.E.Asia in the good ol’ days (1970)
The Singapore Chinese Cook on one of the 5 boats gave a detailed list of items he wanted from the Shipchandler in Singapore.
One of the items on the list was “Black Fruit”. The Shiphandler couldn’t figure out what this , so he called the Port Engineer for clarification.
He didn’t know either. He said; “I don’t Fu*king know. Give them grapefruits”.
On board came a big case of grapefruits, while the Cook wanted a box of Prunes.
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I remember that idea. The range of meals available as ready made were nowhere near what is available today but I still prefer to eat a meal prepared from scratch. There is a company that makes a range of meals and delivers them packed in a Nitrogen atmosphere with a ten day fridge life, but they can be frozen. I have never tried them but at $10 to $11 a portion it’s probably cheaper to keep the cook.
There was a couple of British companies that the food supplied was strictly " Board of Trade rations ". Basically just enough to maintain life.
German ships used to have little lockers in the crew mess where each crew member used to keep their issue of coffee and sugar or fruit.
On ships with Singapore, or mixed S.E.Asian crews, it was common that the Ch-Steward/Purser got a daily allowance per head to feed the officers (S$5.-/day) and the Crew Cook to feed the Crew. (S$ 2.50/day) (Late 1960s, early 70s rates)
Rice, Coffee, Tea and Sugar was “on the ship”.
PS> This generally worked fine, but once in the while the Ch.Steward/Purser had to be called up to "get a “talking to” ,when the quality fell off a bit.
I had a Teochew Bosun that followed me from ship to ships that was so fugal that he insisted on getting the food allowance from the Crew Cook in cash.
He would bum some vegetables and (sometime) some leftover meat from the Officer’s Cook to put on top of the “free rice” in his bowl.
Since the Hainanese Cook also followed me from ship to ship, he was usually very generous with Bosun.
PS> The money he saved went to buy Opium for his nightly pipe.
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I agree with @silverbk . The only times I seen a mariner profit from money designated for food for the ship/tug was in NY harbor. Both times it was captains who resented the responsibility of dealing with grub money & always found a way to put a few bucks in their pockets for their troubles. It wasn’t that much money & they only stole it out of principle/spite. One captain I worked with would pay the taxicab to the store out of the grub money then turn the receipt in for his personal expense to be reimbursed for travel. Pathetic. The fastest way to be transferred off of that ATB was to complain to the DPA or Union about it. Luckily, both the company & union are now defunct & I hope things in NY harbor has changed.
Everyone talks about the value of a good cook but in fact there are three elements, the food has to be in the boxes to begin with which means there had to be a good order. Secondly the steward has to know how to not only order wisely but also requires good planning to use what’s on hand and finally the cook has to do a good job cooking.
Anyone of those three things missing and the foods likely is not going to be as good as it should be. The crew will in fact tolerate sub-standard meals but for how long depends upon the situation. A single good port order with a few special items will often compensate for a week and half of not so good meals grumbling, give or take. Of course there are a few “don’t run out” items.
Deep-sea with about a 20 person crew the chief steward fills out amounts into spreadsheet from a food supply company like Sysco and I review and submit it a couple weeks before arrival in port. Typically we get so-called 90 day stores.
There are two budgets for food, one for the large food order which is so many dollars per man per day. There is a second budget for so call “port orders”, this is for perishables such as fruit, fresh milk and the like during the voyage.
Putting together a food order is mostly a matter of finding an old order that is known be good (presumably the OP does not have one) and subtracting off what remains in inventory.
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Having sailed on a variety of vessels, I have much to compare. Deep Sea, probably the best was States Lines, but a lot of their stewards and cooks were from the Matson and PFE passenger ships. Working on Crowley tugs, we were supplied well and didn’t have a grub stake. Quality of the food was certainly dependent on the quality of the cook, but most were at least capable, save one that I sailed with. When I sailed on the ATB the cook had a grub stake, but one cook was absolutely outstanding. . his relief. . .well, not so much. In fact he was the one cook at Crowley that was the exception. His demise came about when he dropped a bag of groceries and a couple of wine bottles shattered. . . “It was for cooking!”, he yelled as he was escorted off. . yeah, I don’t ever recall anything that he cooked containing wine. . . .
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The purpose of the ship is to operate safely and economically, anything that has to do with food is just a means towards those ends.
The things to track are the inventory of food in the boxes, the budget, quality of meals and what I call the mutiny level.
If the mutiny level is low the quality of meals can be adjusted downwards as needed to compensate for low inventories or remaining budget. A single good meal after a long period of food drought can knock the mutiny level down to acceptance levels. A lot of it has to do with timing. A few days before payoff or pounding through a tough coast-wise when the crew grabs and runs they don’t care as much about meal quality.
News from Science here: May be in use within the next 3 years.
Imperial College of London develops sensor for cell phone that detects spoiled food
This could prevent food poisoning and cut down on food waste. But I would still want to mark the Date the food is acquired on the packaging. And I disagree with adopting this over the “Best used by date” on the packaging. Crew safety and cost per day of the ship if it is down with a sick crew being first concern.
The best feeder I sailed was Chevron, all the govt. stuff got enough food so it was on the steward to determine ‘quality’.
Some how we ran out of coffee about a week or ten days before port call… I don’t recall there being much of a ““investigation””, the steward probably didn’t need a ‘talking to’’ !!
Also ran out of cigarettes near two weeks from hawaii, gawd !!, I was the only one aboard who still had any but I did have one pack that had fallen in the bilge so I handed one of those out when I couldn’t take the pressure any more but i couldn’t smoke them, they were pretty bad. When we stopped for R&R at Hanama bay one of the decky’s swam to shore and BARELY made it back to the Rhib but he had the goods… it was tryiing watching him swim into the rocks, those were the best smokes … then i quit!
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Hopefully you didn’t run out of coffee AND smokes on the same trip. “Oh the horror”
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I worked for a CE on a seismic vessel who also owned a convenient store. We would stay offshore for 5 weeks straight & smokers were always running out of smokes. He would sell these cheap, generic expired cigarettes for $5 a pack offshore while on land they sold for a buck or two when they were still fresh. The smokers would sit around complaining, blowing out the ends of their cigarettes because they would flare up with a real flame. It was hilarious to watch. The smokers complained but always bought & the Chief made a killing.
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It’s now more than 40 years since I smoked my last cigarette and am I thankful. Bringing a seismic ship in to New Zealand one is allowed 50 cigarettes. A pack of 20 cigarettes duty paid is US$3.50. Many of the smokers get through 10 packs a week so they have to spend a small fortune to last 5 weeks.
Pretty unwisely. I can imagine the atmosphere.
Don’t know that I ever sailed on a vessel that ran out of coffee. . . and I sailed for some pretty cheap outfits. . . cigs? Well, that is another story. Of course it only happened to me on a vessel that didn’t have a slop chest. . . for some reason (that I can’t recall now), none of us (then) smokers went ashore to buy any. . . made the trip from the Puget Sound to LA, towing an oil barge and the smokes ran out for most of us by the third day. . . .would have been a great opportunity for me to quit, right? Nah. . . . I did quit about a year later. For 10 years, and then started back again. . . and then quit again 14 years ago. . .and have no desire now. . .
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I’ve never run out of coffee but early one morning I did come across the chief steward putting the coffee from the off-brand containers we had gotten somewhere overseas into the coffee containers of the crew’s usual brand. I asked him what he was doing and he said that the crew would raise a stink if they thought they were drinking off-brand but they wouldn’t notice if he used the old containers.
He was right, they never noticed, or at least nobody ever said anything.
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NO DESIRE?!!! sometimes i would like to take a drag but now with 6 stents and knowledge of what it does to you i have no problem keeping away from them. I quit while in iraq 10 Dec. '07. i guess a pack is now around $7, paying that sort of money to literally poison yourself takes some dedication.
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No desire whatsoever. The first time I quit, I did because my (now ex) wife wanted me to. For ten years I ached for a cigarette, cost and health didn’t matter. . . so I ended up starting back, and did smoke for another 10 years. . .then I just got tired of it. I got tired of the expense… . and I quit, cold turkey, for myself. Was it easy? Meh, I have done tougher things. I was a bit uncomfortable for a week or so. . .
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I’ve done a lot of coast wise sailing, so there’s really no excuse to ever run out of food. And yet, on several occasions, milk and eggs are all of a sudden gone! Go down to breakfast in the morning and order your usual omelette, only to be greeted by “READ THE MENU,” where the steward has put in nice tiny font “No eggs.” Oh, thanks.