Mars Date 10420.4: Unpacking on Mars

We are finally settling into our new home. This requires a lot of unpacking of random containers and boxes. It’s kinda like Christmas because you just don’t know what you are going to get. I was in charge of organizing the food. This sounds simple enough until you realize that the point of the HI-SEAS mission is a food study. That basically means a whole lot of food for six hungry people over four months.

The HI-SEAS crew doing food inventory (photo by Sian Proctor)

One of the biggest challenges was inventory – making sure we have everything on our food list. It was truly a team effort. We needed people looking for the items on the printed ten-page spread sheet. We needed someone scanning items into a barcode system for tracking what we use. And then there was me deciding where things should go.

The HI-SEAS Food Supply (photo by Sian Proctor)

We decided to divide the food equally into 4 monthly bins. This would allow us to spread out our supplies in a logical way and stop us from burning through prized food items like peanut butter or Nutella. I will admit that I am fond of having my tortilla smeared with peanut butter and nutella.

If you are overwhelmed by the amount of food seen in these photos you are not alone. But this is a food study and variety is key. We have a diverse crew from around the world. On the cooking days we can prepare a hometown favorite or a recipe entered into our contest. We can even cook on the fly – which is my style. I am a pantry hunter. I see what’s in the cupboard and mix-match at will. I do not measure. Instead I add a bit of this and a dash of that. But for the purpose of the study I will be carefully measuring everything I use. It’s important to know what we make, how we make it, how much we consume, and how that changes with time. It makes me feel like a rogue culinary comet being captured by Mars.

Could I be the Julia Childs of Mars?

Yes, I wonder!

—Sian Proctor