A retrospective look at astronaut food

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https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2019/07/21/743549993/50-years-after-apollo-11-heres-what-and-how-astronauts-are-eating

[Margaret Pilgrim]

Anybody here remember Space Food Sticks?  

  

 

Or Tang?

[rotuts]

I remember the mercury program well.  I was at the right age to be fascinated.

 

My family and I ( on the west coast ) stayed up until the wee wee hours to see the first launch 

 

delay after delay 

 

B&W  Tube TV of course.

 

and hit took my sister and I forever to get my mother to buy a jar of Tang.

 

I tried as best as i could to like it 

 

but 1/2 of it stayed on the shelf for a long long time.

 

My mother of course pointed this out to us from time to time.

 

Savings and Loans proliferated in CA at that time.

 

One , Great Wester  offered Space Food for any new deposit 

 

it was a foil packed of freeze dried Ham and Peas.

 

I took my small saving out of the competitor across the street

 

and deposited the minimum.  topped it up w the miminum

 

for another pack of Space Food.   I didn't put the S&L out of buisness

 

but they did run out of Space Food.

 

you ate the ham and peas dry.  salty and crunchy it was.

[lemniscate]

Probably not Apollo 11 authentic, but Astronaut ice cream is awesome, except expensive.

[rotuts]

Heston Blumenthal had a show a few years ago

 

part of a series :  better snacks at the Cinema , better airplane food etc

 

and as a British Astronaut was about to fly on the IntSS

 

it was devoted to space food.  this was the part mentioned in the fine article about an individual

 

astronaut's personal favorites.

 

but HB took some time talking about the redistribution of fluids in the astronauts ,  nasal congestiong

 

fluid accumulating around the tongue etc  issues w crumbs .

 

and also , the little mentioned problems w aromas on the IntSS :

 

apparently it's a good think you have lost your sense of smell :  the air is ' scrubbed " for sure

 

but so many little molecules of offensiveness can't be taken out of the IntSS air

 

who knew ?

[Kim Shook]

6 hours ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

Anybody here remember Space Food Sticks?  

  

 

Or Tang?

I had completely forgotten about Food Sticks!  They were so incredibly weird.  For some reason, I decided that is exactly what soft dog treats must have tasted like.  

[Margaret Pilgrim]

2 minutes ago, Kim Shook said:

I had completely forgotten about Food Sticks!  They were so incredibly weird.  For some reason, I decided that is exactly what soft dog treats must have tasted like.  

Space sticks were a lot like Tootsie Rolls.    

[kayb]

There's a diner/burger place in my former home town of Marion, AR, where the proprietress makes all manner of homemade pies. One of her standbys is a "Tang Pie," which appears to greatly favor a Key Lime pie except with Tang instead of Key lime juice. 

 

@Smithy, it's Big John's Shake Shack, where we ate when y'all came through last year. They now have a new building, behind the old one, which has been leveled for more parking. Maybe we can try it again when y'all come through this fall!

 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

Once upon a time I bought a jar of Tang for a Rose Levy Beranbaum recipe.  The cake was great but after about twenty years the jar of Tang was not.  I threw it out.

 

[Margaret Pilgrim]

1 hour ago, JoNorvelleWalker said:

Once upon a time I bought a jar of Tang for a Rose Levy Beranbaum recipe.  The cake was great but after about twenty years the jar of Tang was not.  I threw it out.

 

Fascinating!    What were the qualities of Tang that she wanted for that recipe, and how could you/we have substituted real ingredients to create the same effect?

[JoNorvelleWalker]

16 minutes ago, Margaret Pilgrim said:

Fascinating!    What were the qualities of Tang that she wanted for that recipe, and how could you/we have substituted real ingredients to create the same effect?

 

Make one get up off her chair, you will?  OK, 13.5 g Tang.  Beranbaum stresses Tang is not optional because of the bright orange flavor.  You might try substituting orange essential oil.

 

[BeeZee]

I had a mango filled donut ar Voodoo Donuts that had Tang dusted vanilla frosting. The sourness played off the mango filiing. That was probably my only time eating Tang, since I know my Mother would not have allowed it in the house when I was a kid😉

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I remember it being around for a year or two in my childhood. Frozen concentrated orange juice hadn't quite made it to my neck of the woods yet, so the options were either canned or fresh-squeezed, and the latter was only an occasional extravagance (served in very small glasses which, IIRC, were the deliberately-reusable jars from a brand of mustard or something).

I didn't mind it, as a kid, but once the frozen stuff arrived it was all over for Tang.

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...and, as a bookend to the original discussion, a look at how NASA's "space farming" technology is/can be applied here on Earth:

 

https://psmag.com/social-justice/the-farms-of-the-future-were-built-for-outer-space-will-they-work-on-earth/