Menu For Mars Supper Club (M4MSC)

Menu For Mars Supper Club

organized by Heidi Neilson & Douglas Paulson

There is nothing to eat on Mars, unless you eat rock.  To augment government and private space programs, The Menu for Mars Supper Club will research and taste-test a menu for dinner tables en route to, and on, the Red Planet.

We are a dedicated crew of culinary explorers that meet at a different restaurant each month. Our mission is to eat and survey these restaurants; gathering recommendations, suggestions and opinions from restaurateurs about what food they would prepare on Mars.  Each dinner we are joined by an expert who has insight into related fields: spaceship permaculture, micro-horticulture, space nutrition, culinary anthropology, and more.  The series will culminate in a Martian cook-off.

The supper club’s collected and summarized dinner findings will be made available to NASA, the Chinese Space Program, the India Mars Mission, the Mars One endeavor, and other people engaged in planning Mars colonization.

At the end of the series, we will celebrate with a cook-off. In the Flux kitchen, guest chefs will cook meals suitable for Mars for a panel of outer space professionals.

We are gathering our data here: Menu4Mars.net

To join the M4MSC crew, write doug@fluxfactory.org, with the subject: “MAR.S.V.P.”

[EXPAND Mission #1: Thursday May 1st 2014, 8pm.]
Cuisine: Indian.
Location: Long Island City.
Topic: While dining, we will be discussing the history of food in outer space.[/EXPAND]

[EXPAND Mission #2: Thursday, June 5th 2014, 8pm.] Cuisine: Dim Sum + bugs.
Location: Chinatown.
Topic: While dining, Gil Lopez, of Smiling Hog’s Head Ranch, will launch the conversation with a crash course in growing and eating fungi, algae, bugs, and pickle-ables – on this world and the next.  He’ll bring an assortment of bugs to top off our Dim Sum mushrooms.[/EXPAND]

[EXPAND Mission #3: Saturday, June 7th 2014, 1-3pm.] Cuisine: Meal Replacement Picnic.
Location: Central Park.
Topic: Meal replacement picnic in Central Park! We’ll gather a selection of meal replacements for a mouth watering taste test buffet in the grass.  We’ll discuss the role of, and considerations when making replacement meals for the menus on Mars.[/EXPAND]

[EXPAND Mission #4: Thursday, August 21st 2014, 7pm.] Cuisine: Moonshine.
Location: Van Brunt Stillhouse.
Topic: We’ll be exploring the possibility of colonial Martian libations at Van Brunt Stillhouse in Red Hook.  Afterwards, we’ll trod over to Brooklyn Ice House, since Mars is cold, for dinner and to speculate further about Martian pub culture.[/EXPAND]

[EXPAND Mission #5: Tuesday, September 16th 2014, 7pm.] Cuisine: Russian.
Location: Hell’s Kitchen
Topic: Arlin Crotts, Professor of Astronomy at Columbia University and author of The New Moon: Water, Exploration, and Future Habitation, will be joining us to talk about the nuts & bolts (and tastes & smells!) of living on Mars (and the Moon)[/EXPAND]

[EXPAND Mission #6: Wednesday, October 22th 2014, 7pm.] Cuisine: Ethiopian.
Location: Cobble Hill.
Topic: Jana Grcevich, Astrophysicist and member of the Intergalactic Travel Bureau, will be joining us to discuss how astronauts heat food in space, particularly what induction heating is and how it is used, and the advantages induction heating would have for on-Mars cooking. We’ll also discuss the physics behind why, even in artificially pressurized environments, we’ll have to use the “high altitude” version of a recipe on Mars.[/EXPAND]

[EXPAND Mission #7: Sunday, January 18th 2015, 7pm.] Cuisine: farm-to-table.Location: Upper West Side.
Ann Nunziata, a certified Natural Foods Chef at NYC’s Natural Gourmet Institute will discuss food energetics—the holistic study of how food is prepared and how it affects our lives and well-being, on Earth and on Mars.[/EXPAND]

[EXPAND Mission #8: Sunday, February 21st 2015, 3:30pm.]

Cuisine: it’s not cuisine anymore, it’s compost.
Location: Crown Heights.
We’ll visit the Brooklyn Botanic Garden to view their composting exhibit and speak to an expert about cultivating dirt, and food, on Mars. Repair afterward to the Way Station, a science-fiction themed based bar near the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for brainstorming toward our final event in May.[/EXPAND]