After a year of research, Menu for Mars Supper Club implemented its findings in an analog Mars kitchen in Brooklyn. Visitors were invited to prototype meals using dried and thermostabilized ingredients, as well as ingredients from the greenhouse. Dishes were documented, sampled, vacuum-packed, and collected into a cookbook.
Participating artists, gardeners, musicians, and cooks are: Albert Park, Alex Tsocanos, Alice Gorman, Anna Dabney Smith & David Grainger, Gil Lopez, Heather Kapplow & Thalia Zedek, Hoi Cheng, John Roach, Joshua Liebowitz, Justin Amrhein, Kerim Zapsu, Lindsay Iserman, Marco Castro, The Planetary Society New York City, Sian Proctor, Tattfoo Tan, Ward Shelley, Will Owen with Matthias Borello.
Kitchen Tour Slideshow
Programs & Scheduled Cookery
May 29 – 7-9pm
Opening. Drink a Spider from Mars (via Australia) with Dr. Space Junk
May 30 – 4pm
Sian Proctor, Mars on Earth: Living in a Mars Simulation
Did you know that there are people on Earth living in Mars simulations? For the past few years NASA has funded Mars simulations on the big island of Hawaii. The project is called Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation (HI-SEAS). The crew consists of six individuals from around the world and simulations can last from four months to one year. Dr. Sian Proctor was a crew member for HI-SEAS Mission 1 which focused on food strategies for long duration space flight.
SIAN’S BIO: Sian Proctor is a geology professor at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, Arizona. Throughout her adult life she has pushed herself to take on new challenges and to learn new things. She has a B.S. in Environmental Science, M.S. in Geology, and a Ph.D. in Science Education. Both her masters and doctorate research involved the use of technology to understand how individuals learn. She teaches both hybrid and online geology classes, and has traveled and taught around the world. She was a finalist for the 2009 NASA Astronaut Program, was on the Discovery Channel reality TV show called The Colony, was the Education Outreach Officer on the 4-month NASA funded Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation 2013 Mission, and this past year was a 2014 PolarTREC teacher doing climate change research in Barrow, Alaska. Sian’s amazing career has been a direct result of her love of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM). She also enjoys traveling, playing sports, photography, and cooking.
May 31 – 4pm
Planetary Society Meetup
Join The New York Chapter of the Planetary Society’s Meetup to prototype recipes for Mars. The Planetary Society was founded in 1980 by Carl Sagan, Bruce Murray, and Louis Friedman to inspire and involve the world’s public in space exploration through advocacy, projects, and education. But can they cook?
June 4 – 3-6pm
Will Owen, ARES RADIO 1
The atmosphere on Mars is made of different gases than Earth’s. The quality of sound as it travels through the air will be different due to the variant density of molecules. Will Owen will perform and DJ along with percussionist Matthias Borello live over Skype using filters and Equalizers to mimic how audio will sound on Mars.
June 5 – 4-6pm
Gil Lopez, Workshop – Yogurt making and mushroom tour
A workshop experimenting with making yogurt from powdered milk, followed by a tour of the Kitchen’s fungus facilities.
June 6 – 3-4pm
Tattfoo Tan, Workshop – Drying food and pemmican variation
A workshop on making a Mars-version of Pemmican – a concentrated mixture of fat and protein invented by the native peoples of North America and widely adopted as a high-energy food by Europeans involved in the fur trade and later by Arctic and Antarctic explorers, such as Robert Falcon Scott and Roald Amundsen.
June 7 – 4pm
Anna Dabney, David Grainger & Guest, Lahpet Thote / Pickled Tea Leaf Salad Workshop
Laphet is a pickled or fermented tea leaf native to Burma. Customarily eaten as a salad (“thote”) or frequently mixed with rice, Laphet serves important medicinal and ceremonial purposes. Despite recent softening of U.S. trade policy, members of the Burmese community in the US continue to rely on friends and family to shuttle Laphet and other traditional ingredients from Burma. Ingredients vary regionally and often include: Pickled tea leaf, peanut oil, garlic, channa dal, dried butter beans, peanuts, sesame seeds, dried shrimp, green chilis, fish sauce, lime juice (or dried equivalent) tomato, cabbage, fried beetle larva.
June 13 – 3pm
Heather Kapplow & Thalia Zedek, Jiminy Mac & Cheese
Taste test the future of and old favorite – this entrée is a cricket-enhanced, Mars-pantry-friendly take on Mac & Cheese.
June 13 – 5pm
Heather Kapplow & Thalia Zedek, Miracle Fruit Tasting, featuring the Astronaut Reviver cocktail
“Miracle fruit” temporarily alters a person’s flavor perception, which might be a nice change for Mars colonists. Participants will sample various Menu for Mars Kitchen pantry items before and after miracle fruit application, and note how the results could be applied to Mars cuisine. The Astronaut Reviver cocktail is a pervasive-hydrogen-peroxide-taste-busting elixir adapted from a Corpse Reviver for Mars-pantry suitability.
June 14 – 4pm
Lindsay Iserman, Artificial Sunshine: Citric Acid in Mars cooking
Discussion of the uses of citric acid in flavoring and preservation of food. Demo and tasting of a Citric acid based Mars cocktail.
June 20 – 4pm
Cook-off conclusion, and NASA shipment
Participants will be invited to polish off all the ingredients in the pantry and feast. Awards will be given to the most remarkable dishes. All dishes from the duration of the kitchen will be packed and prepared to be shipped to NASA.
Works on View in the Habitat
Justin Amrhein, Office of Plans and Drawings
An ongoing display of working sketches and plans from the project and fantastic technical drawings.
Marco Castro, Inflatable garden & greenhouse
Inflated, rapidly deployable garden that grows hearty edible weeds fit for making the long journey to Mars and adapting to the planet’s harsh conditions.
Joshua Liebowitz, Untag: Prototype for Nutritional Privacy in Barcode-Ready Vegetation, Agar and LEDs
An experiment using spectrum-hacked agriculture to counter foodstuffs surveillance on Mars.
Gil Lopez, Living Food for the Dead Planet
Fungi, ferments, and other live cultures can help Mars colonists nourish themselves while reducing energy needed to produce and prepare these living foods.
Heidi Neilson, Big Sky Out There
Viewers can gaze out onto the bleak Martian terrain through five portholes.
Dr. Sian Proctor with the HI-SEAS crew, Meals for Mars Episodes 1-22
Meals for Mars is a series of cooking videos made by the participants during NASA’s HI-SEAS Mars analog mission, on view in the Menu for Mars Kitchen control room.
John Roach, Simmering Rocks
Simmering Rocks is a soundtrack for the Martian kitchen. Researchers probe jars of minerals to sonically capture their expelled gasses creating a symphony that evokes both the effervescent magic of carbonation and the nostalgic music of the earth’s ionosphere.
Alex Tsocanos, Hoi Cheng, Kerim Zapsu, Ward Shelley, Mars Kitchen Habitat Architecture
Pressurized “Kitchen” habitat will house the cooking quarters and the agricultural experiments of the Menu For Mars contributors.
Tattfoo Tan, NEMRE – New Earth Meal Ready to Eat
The Menu for Mars Kitchen pantry will feature NEMREs – dehydrated food packs made from rescued food waste that is shelves stable in preparation for nature disaster due to climate change.