#500 A Galley tour

With an 11-day crossing between Taiwan and Hawaii, we have some time to tell you a little about shipboard life.  First, the food.

We've never had a tour of the MV Explorer galley, so we leap at the offer from hotel director John Naggs to get a behind-the-scenes look at where our food comes from. 

We enter the galley through the doors from the deck 5 dining hall.  And then immediately we ride down the escalator to the galley on deck 4.  Who knew we had an escalator on board?



The galley is immaculate.  It is easy to see that the crew takes health and safety seriously.  There's a reason they've scored 100/100 the last 4 times inspected by United States Public Health.

Everyone knows what a good cook I am, so I volunteer to make the soup for today.

We learn from John:

• The crew bakes all the breads. 
• Though more expensive, the cooking oil used is later turned into fuel.
• Since the installation of the new coffee makers on this voyage, we've used 3-4 times more coffee than past voyages.
• Food waste is the only shipboard waste that goes straight into the sea.
• As for equipment repairs, the advantage of a shipboard kitchen is that the engineers are on site.  The disadvantage is that it's tough to get spare parts.  
• The crew spends about $400,000 at the beginning of the voyage to purchase food and supplements that with fruits and vegetables along the way.

Yours in appreciating those who work so hard to keep me out of the kitchen,
Mary