Granted, the first human spaceflight to Mars is still far, far away. But when we are there, we got to eat! And obviously, we cannot carry all the food that we would need, so why not derive (at least some of) the ingredients from Mars :D:D?
French chefs are
helping the
European Space Agency develop recipes that could be used to make food grown in space tasty as well as nutritious. The menus were based on nine main ingredients that could be grown in future space-based greenhouses. The dishes could be made with 40% of these ingredients, and the remaining 60% could come from Earth-based ingredients.
Spirulina Gnocchis :)) (Courtesy: ESA)The recipes created were 'Martian bread and green tomato jam', 'Spirulina gnocchis' and 'Potato and tomato mille-feuilles'. The challenge for the chefs was to offer astronauts well-flavoured food, made with only a few ingredients that could be grown on Mars. According to Christophe Lasseur, ESA's biological life-support coordinator, the nine basic ingredients might be grown on other planets are: rice, onions, tomatoes, soya, potatoes, lettuce, spinach, wheat and
spirulina – all common ingredients except the last. Spirulina is a blue-green algae, a very rich source of nutrition with lots of protein (65% by weight), calcium, carbohydrates, lipids and various vitamins that cover essential nutritional needs for energy in extreme environments.
Now if only I had a jug of
Romulan Ale to go with it :D:D:D.