Canadian Navy: It’s Timmies or nothin’, eh?
November 4th, 2009 | Chow Foreign navies Life at Sea Morale | Posted by Phil Ewing
U.S. and Canadian airmen unloaded a mobile Tim Hortons from a C-17 at Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan. Tim Hortons coffee fuels Canada's military in the same way that F76 and JP-5 fuel the U.S. Navy // Canadian Forces
Why do Canadians love Tim Hortons so much? Good question. Why do boatswain’s mates wear those funny hard hats? These are mysteries to which there may never be good answers, but their effects are quite plain — especially that first one. Canadians love their “Timmies,” as they call it, in the same way they love power plays and those French fries with that weird gravy on them. Well indeed does Scoop Deck remember spotting a Tim Hortons, dispensing piping hot coffee, on a 115-degree afternoon at Kandahar Air Field, Afghanistan.
The Canadian Forces needs its Timmies so bad that it has issued a solicitation for the coffee in Halifax by name. Starbucks, Peet’s, Gevalia — none need apply, the CBC reports:
“There shall be no acceptable substitute,” according to the tender issued Monday. “Tim Hortons has been determined by MARLANT” — the navy’s Maritime Forces Atlantic command — “as the product of choice based on expressed customer taste and preferences for boosting morale in Afghanistan, Sudan and Sierra Leone.”
You can’t get a much bigger endorsement than a nation’s military requesting your product to the exclusion of all those other hosers. Is there an equivalent coffee in the U.S. Navy? Or do you rely on command ingenuity to create a distinctive product — i.e. “boat coffee?”
H/T: Springbored (who praised the U.S. Navy’s decision to shed “fru-fru, gold-plated, 5th Generation stealth coffee.”)
New ovens take the work out of chow at sea
October 27th, 2009 | Carriers Chow Life at Sea Science and technology The deckplates | Posted by Phil Ewing
In the future, CS3 Jermaine Thompson, of the carrier Enterprise, could need to only push a button and his oven would know exactly how long to bake this bread // Navy
The Navy operates some of the most advanced equipment on the planet, what with all the fighter jets and nuclear reactors and Aegis radars and such, but less so in the galley, where culinary specialists depend as much on their own skill as new technology. That’s changing, though — sailors aboard the carrier Abraham Lincoln are testing three new high-speed ovens that can basically cook meals on their own, and which promise to make work much simpler for the CSes of tomorrow.
The Blodgett Hydrovection, Rational Combi, and Alto Shaam Combi-therm all can be programmed with the Navy’s standard menu items, which means that sailors can prepare entrees the way the rest of us push the “popcorn” button on the microwave:
“Now the culinary specialist doesn’t have to read off the card and set everything accordingly. It’s as simple as pressing a few buttons,” said Culinary Specialist 1st Class Eric Russell…
For example, the menu card for beef roast rib says to roast the meat for three to four hours at 300 degrees Fahrenheit. Since the oven knows this, the CS just has to look under the beef section for roast rib and the oven knows the exact temperature and time left to cook.
In cases like beef rib roast where the menu card instructs the CS to insert a thermometer and roast until it reaches a certain temperature in the center, the new oven has another convenient feature. There is a sensor the CS can insert in the meat so the oven can keep track of the temperature itself. It knows that according to the menu card, beef rib roast must be roasted until the center is at least 140 degrees Fahrenheit. So it adjusts the remaining time according to the temperature of the meat.
It’s the galley practices of tomorrow — today! If your ship makes a lot of special requests for chow, these new ovens eventually will include the ability for local cooks to program them, according to this story.
A spicy Fleet Week in the fleet city
October 16th, 2009 | Chow Life at Sea Morale | Posted by Phil Ewing
SH1 Cedric Avant, sailor of the quarter for the destroyer Nitze, dropped a puck to start a Norfolk Admirals hockey game Oct. 9. The week included other events in addition to puck-dropping // MC2 Santos Huante/ Navy
How do you tell when it’s Fleet Week in the city with the world’s largest naval base? Although every week is pretty much Fleet Week in Hampton Roads, Va., it has actually been Fleet Week there for the past few days, and the events will wrap up this weekend with an air show at Naval Air Station Oceana in Virginia Beach.
But the jet blast from the air show won’t have been the only source of heat in the Tidewater this week — Navy commands from all over contributed submissions to this year’s chili cook-off, according to a Navy announcement.
The chili detachment from the fast attack submarine Scranton took the Big Dipper award for their dreaded Deep Dive Chili, for example: “Scranton sailors also sounded their dive alarm, the klaxon, to alert other crowd-goers of their presence.”
And then there were the other entries:
“We compared chili with the [Naval Support Activity] Northwest and Little Creek galleys,” said Culinary Specialist 1st Class (SW/AW) Shawn Shepherd, leading petty officer of the Naval Station Norfolk galley. “We were the only ones to have had ground bison in our chili. Both had a very unique taste with a lot of herbs and spices. Overall, this was a great event.”
Showmanship and judges’ choice first-place awards were awarded to the NSA Northwest Annex galley for their “Devil’s Spit chili” and Halloween-themed setting, with fake body-part props.
Yes, nothing awakens an appetite like prop limbs.
Who has the best mess in the Navy?
October 12th, 2009 | Chow Life at Sea Morale The deckplates | Posted by Phil Ewing
The galley aboard the destroyer O'Kane, seen here in 2005 on a first-class petty officer pizza night, is one of the 18 finalists for the Navy's best-mess award // Navy
Who do you think gets the best chow in the Navy? Scoop Deck has eaten really well on the guided-missile submarine Georgia; the amphibious assault ship Makin Island; and the cruiser Anzio, but there are many galleys out there and this is the kind of question about which people develop forceful opinions.
If it helps narrow the terms of the argument, check out Naval Supply Systems Command’s list of finalists for its yearly Ney Award, which recognizes the best galley in the fleet. There are 18 potential winners afloat and ashore, and each of them can expect a rigorous going-over that will determine who gets this year’s prize:
Even LPD 21’s lettuce supplier feels the power
August 26th, 2009 | Chow Morale Ships | Posted by Phil Ewing
Sailors from the amphibious transport dock New York had a moment of silence May 21 with a steel pole taken from the wreckage of the World Trade Center // Navy
If there was any doubt that the amphibious transport dock New York carries an aura unlike any other Navy warship, consider the comments of the guys who supplied it with produce.
Dan and Flint Robertson, of Robertson Produce, told Navy Times’ shipmates at The News-Star of Monroe, La., that delivering crates of fruit and vegetables to the New York wasn’t like any other order they’ve done.
“‘They treated us like royalty,’ said Dan Robertson, who toured the ship with his father, Flint, earlier this month. ‘It made me so proud to be an American.’”
“‘There was such a sense of awe on the ship,’” said Flint Robertson, 75, who is retired from the family business. ‘Wherever it goes around the world it will be known for its connection to the World Trade Center.’”
The European flavour
August 10th, 2009 | Chow Foreign navies Morale Shore duty The Middle East | Posted by Phil Ewing
KANDAHAR AIR FIELD, AFGHANISTAN — Before we arrived on Sunday, people kept telling us this place was like Mos Eisley Cantina in “Star Wars,” and it is, kind of — a Babylon in the scrubland, filled with people in strange uniforms, speaking exotic languages. There are service members here from the dozens of NATO nations that form the International Security Assistance Force, and it is fine sport to sit and observe their different camouflage patterns, badges of rank and unit insignia.
Maybe the chief ate all five vectors
July 23rd, 2009 | Chow Morale Personnel | Posted by Andrew Scutro
//U.S. Navy
It used to be that you couldn’t swing a dead cat and not hit a Five Vector Model. But it’s been a few years without a single dead cat/5vM mishap. Once everywhere, now vapor. Once always in arm’s reach, now gone on a midnight train to Georgia.
Above please find one of the last confirmed sightings of a 5vM, appearing in the form of a festive and frosted cake aboard the amphibious assault ship Essex on the occasion of the Navy’s 231st birthday.
Two questions about the 5vM (not the cake).
1. Where did it go?
2. We know what it was. Do you?