The Food

We are fed pretty good here on the Mercy. They run a tight meal line. We are served cafeteria style with 2 lines one for the officers - always the quicker line, and one for the enlisted. Breakfast is from 5:30-7:15, lunch 11-12:30 and dinner 4:30-6:15pm. We usually have choices of 3 mail courses, soup, salad, and lots of fruit. I love the fruit the best. I am surprised that I am not gaining weight as they feed us so well. I think the millions of flights of stairs and the daily exercise are really important for both physical and mental reasons. When we take our trays in we have to separate the bones, the paper, and the food so the dish line is sometimes longer than the food line. It is important to finish eating early if we have to be somewhere. We were even served king crab and steaks for lunch once. It was quite a feast!


At mealtimes we have been introduced to a lot of different types of fruit. The small fruit is called longan fruit which you have to peel and then there is a grape like meat inside with a bright maroon seed in the middle that you spit out. It is pretty good, but a lot of work to eat. I so want a longon tree in my yard. The mangoes are my favorite. They are unlike any mango that I have ever eaten. One looks like a potato on the outside. I also had a guava today – the green wrinkled fruit. It had the consistency of an apple, but had a kind of sour taste. It was yummy. Persimmons were another new fruit for me. Not my favorite though.