Thanksgiving in space: Space station commander Shane Kimbrough plans feast
After a normal workday in orbit Thursday, International Space Station commander Shane Kimbrough plans to host an American Thanksgiving Day dinner of turkey, green beans, mashed potatoes and all the trimmings with his U.S., French and Russian colleagues.
“Of course Thanksgiving, in my world, is not complete without some football,” Kimbrough said in a video update from orbit Monday. “So we’re going to have mission control send up some live football games for us to watch to complete the experience of Thanksgiving.
“I hope you all have something very special to be thankful for. We do. We’re very safe up here. We’re going to have a great time enjoying Thanksgiving dinner with our colleagues.”
Kimbrough, Soyuz MS-02 commander Sergey Ryzhikov and flight engineer Andrey Borisenko were launched to the space station Oct. 19 and reached the outpost two days later. NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson, Soyuz MS-03 commander Oleg Novitskiy and European Space Agency flight engineer Thomas Pesquet arrived this past Saturday.
Floating in the Destiny laboratory module, Kimbrough showed off the Thanksgiving Day fare, holding up packets of food and explaining how they will be put together.
“It’s going to be a little different for us up here in space, but I’m going to try to make it as much like home as we can,” he said. “It is a work day for us, so we’re not going to get the day off like most folks in the United States. We’re going to work all day, and then we’re going to have a big dinner full of most of the things you’re going to have at your table.”
The turkey comes in a pouch, he said, and “we’re going to heat this up and it’s going to taste really good, just like you’re having at home. We got cherry blueberry cobbler for dessert, so that’s going to be awesome. Let’s see, one of our side dishes is candied yams. That’s something else we’ll heat up, obviously.”
Dehydrated items will require the crew to add water before heating, including cornbread dressing, mashed potatoes and green beans and mushrooms.
“I’m from Atlanta, so I can’t have Thanksgiving Dinner without having some sweet tea,” Kimbrough said. “In our case, we have sweet tea with lemon in this drink packet. I keep saying ‘we’ because I’ve kind of made this meal for the entire crew.
“We’re obviously going to be talking about what Thanksgiving means to us, what we’re thankful for and sharing the tradition with our French and Russian colleagues. So we’re going to have a great time.”
