Jeff Houck

The Tampa Tribune’s food writer since 2005, Jeff Houck covers the way people live through their food. He also hosts the Table Conversations food podcast and believes that everything crunchy is good.

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Astronaut Nicole Stott Talks Of Food In Space [Birthday Cake, Japanese Curries, Truffle Pate]

Posted Jan 22, 2010 by Jeff Houck

Updated Jan 22, 2010 at 06:29 PM

In August, I got a chance to chat with Nicole Passanno Stott, the former Clearwater resident who was about to go into space for three months to stay aboard the International Space Station.

She sounded excited on the phone as she talked about her upcoming adventure, but as a mother of a 7-year-old she was understandably concerned about the effect that her absence would have on her son.

During the conversation, I asked if she would be posting her thoughts on Twitter. When she said she would, I asked her if she could post about the food experiences she was having onboard station. She said that she planned to try some new things with food preparation while she was in orbit. She agreed to do so. You know, when she wasn’t snatching Japanese cargo carriers with grappling arms, jogging on the COLBERT treadmill and doing 6.5-hour spacewalks.

Stott returned to earth in November after 91 days aloft.  I talked with her on Wednesday to catch up about her experience. The full story runs Sunday in the Tampa Tribune. (A preview of the story ran earlier this week on TBO.com.)

If all goes as planned, she’ll go back into space in September as a member of the STS-133 crew. The mission is scheduled to be the last flight of the shuttle fleet before it’s retired.

I asked her what her emotions were like as the shuttle undocked from the ISS after serving as her home for three months:

“It was a bittersweet thing. I was ready to get back home to my family, because it was the planned end of the time I was supposed to be there, but on the other hand I felt like I could just … stay. It had gone by so fast, that all of a sudden I’m watching the station leave and I’m, like, “Man, where’d it go? How did the three months go by so fast?”

“You know, the more it got further and further away from view, I didn’t think it could look any prettier for me than it already had when I got there. It’s just this amazingly beautiful place.”

Here’s the food-related portion of our conversation:

Q. I went through your Twitter feed and I saw a couple things I wanted to pick out. I see on Oct. 19, “I just ate half a grapefruit. Yummy! And it smells so good too!”
You and I talked a little about food before you left and about trying new things. What kind of food stuff did you try when you got up there.

A. All of the international partners have food. I think I probably ate the Japanese curries maybe three times a week. I’m not a big curry person on the ground. I like it, but…

Q. Japanese curry?

A. Yeah, it is excellent

Q. Everyone trades a little bit?

A. You order before you fly. You let them know the kinds of stuff you like and they try to get that up for you. Then there’s the standard menu items. There’s really a nice mix of food up there. It was kind of weird for me to be eating curry three nights a week, but it tasted great.

Then the Europeans had a mushroom truffle pate thing.

Q. Wow.

A. Yeah, but you could only eat it once a week because it probably had, like 7,000 calories. [laughs] But it was delicious. You just open a can of that and eat it like dip.

A nice mix of stuff. I never felt like, “Oh, my gosh, not another one of those grill-marked meat patties. [laughs]

Q. I also saw your post about celebrating your birthday on station.

A. Yeah.

Q. What did you do?

A. [feigns disgust] We had a little cake and dinner and stuff, but I’m not real big on having my birthday celebrated.

Q. Guess what? Today’s mine.

A. Is it? Happy birthday!

Q. I don’t want to celebrate mine, either.

A. Yeah. My husband is totally the opposite. If you don’t give an indication a month out that you know it’s coming… [laughs] Whereas I’m someone you don’t ever have to acknowledge it.

Q. Glad I could poke you in the eye by asking about your birthday, Nicole.

A. [laughs]

Q. I’m sure the Tampa Tribune readers will enjoy this.

A. Yeah. [laughs] This is good.

Q. So you had cake. Did anyone sing?

A. The STS-129 crew had arrived. One of the astronauts in the office, Marsha Ivins, is a wonderful baker and she sent up a really delicious chocolate torte cake thing. Oh, it was so good. So we broke that out.

Q. I’m guessing it had to be dense so there wouldn’t be crumbs floating around.

A. It was, it was. You need a microthin piece [laughs] because it was so rich and very good. We actually had them bring up some little ice cream things, because we have several freezers up there now. We were able to keep it cold, so we had cake and ice cream.

Q. What kind of ice cream?

A. Just a little, I don’t know. Was it Texas Bluebell?

Q. What was it, vanilla?

A. Yeah, just vanilla.

Q. And then I saw the one post you had where you wrote, “‘Physical separation’ call – Atlantis is undocked from ISS.” What was that sensation of leaving that place?

A. Again, it was a bittersweet thing. I was ready to get back home to my family, because it was the planned end of the time I was supposed to be there, but on the other hand I felt like I could just … stay. It had gone by so fast, that all of a sudden I’m watching the station leave and I’m, like, “Man, where’d it go? How did the three months go by so fast?”

You know, the more it got further and further away from view, I didn’t think it could look any prettier for me than it already had when I got there. It’s just this amazingly beautiful place.

Here’s a gallery of photos (courtesy of NASA) that documents her training and mission: