@USSCod
We were glad we could help you with this video! For the sequel to this video we should cook something aboard the cod. And maybe show off our ice cream machine.
@robertsistrunk6631
"Fresh frozen" signifies that a food product was rapidly frozen shortly after being harvested or processed, while it was still in its peak freshness
@katrussell6819
In the 1950s my dad, who had served in Navy landing craft during WW2 would never enjoy pancakes with my mom and us kids. Mom always made him bacon and eggs. I asked him why he didn't want to eat these glorious pancakes. He told us a story about the last months of the war in the Philippines when they ran out of provisions. There was only flour and a bit of powdered eggs left. They had pancakes for three meals a day for weeks. He promised himself he would never eat another pancake for the rest of his life. I never saw him eat one. He lived to be 89.
@OMGitsaClaire
About those eggs… my grandfather was a navy cook aboard the USS Rochambeau in WWII. He said if you cooked the powdered eggs wrong they turned a sort of gray-green color. His theory was that green eggs and ham was actually “I do not like green eggs and spam! I do not like them Uncle Sam!” Because when the eggs turned green, the sailors just would not eat them. He made pretty excellent banana and coconut cream pies though. Albeit in massive portions and he never cleaned up after himself much to the ire of my grandmother. He blamed it on the navy.
@supergeek1418
Ex submariner here. We often had boxes of #10 canned foods on the floors of passageways when first departing. We simply walked on them, as if they were the standard deck. They were (usually) the first cans to be used so as to avoid the boxes sliding during up or down angles during rising or diving. The food WAS pretty good, though.
@goukeban6197
There's a room in Max's house where nobody else can enter and its only function is to house the thousands of Pokemon plushies he holds until it's time to put them in a video.
@IvanJardine
I'll tell you what I remember. I was on the Canadian submarine, HMCS Okanagan, in the mid 70's. We had a crew of about 65 and there was only one cook, and he was an absolute genius. I have nothing but praise for the cooks on all the ships I served on. Red light was used at night in the control room and other parts of the sub so as not to impede the vision of people manning the periscope. The red light helped with meals as well; After two weeks at sea the bread would get blue-mold spots on it, so we would toast it and eat it at night, because you couldn't see the blue-mold under red light. Like the American subs, Canadian subs had excellent food as well. I don't remember any stewards on the sub, I think the officers had to fend for themselves like the rest of us. We never had any fresh baked bread, the cook wouldn't have had time to make it. I've always remembered how fabulous those Navy cooks were, and would like to pass it on. So, I hope some people read this comment, because they deserve the praise. I also must add that I worked in the engine room and very often the temperature would reach 125 degrees Fahrenheit and occasionally 140.
@Anarchyinthe603
My dad was a cook-baker on three WWII diesel subs during the Vietnam War: the USS Bluegill, USS Menhaden, and the USS Perch, which iirc, is the boat on which he was serving when he met my mom. Fun fact, aside from a couple of the positions in the galley changing over the years, not much else really had changed by the time my dad was serving. As cook-baker, it was his job to wake up and start his evening by hot swapping with some other guy who was taking over his bunk, then starting off the night doing a night watch before going into the galley to start his baking for the day. Part of the reason why baked goods were so important was not just because of the weather conditions necessitating things like sandwiches and rolls being handy, but also because it was so much easier to store dry goods like powdered milk, powdered eggs, flour and the like, than trying to store enough fresh bread to feed 100 sailors three times a day. The amount of baked goods you can make from those easily stored dry goods is so much more than trying to store that much bread and keep it fresh long enough, as well - anyway, one time we went on a tour of the USS Albacore, which is still able to be toured in drydock as a museum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and the interior of the boat was identical to that which he had served on back in his day. It's incredible just how much food they could put out in such a small space, the kitchen smaller than that of some efficiency/studio apartments that I've seen in my past! His boats were also some of the lucky ones that had distilled water, so he did get to have his once weekly shower, and until the day he passed he still only took 5 minute showers out of habit. It makes me smile that you mention the powdered eggs - the shell trick never did work, not just because of the off texture and flavor, but also the fact that the powdered eggs that they were using, at least in my dad's day... After a while in storage, the sulfuric compounds in the powdered yolk would start to oxidize, and the powdered egg scramble that they would make would always have a distinct greenish color plus a sulphur-y odor that they could do nothing about. Another thing that was affected was the powdered milk - he used to take his coffee with a lot of cream and sugar during his naval career, all the way until he started serving on submarines. The powdered milk would get all...wrong after being in the dry storage for a while, and he would often shudder and say... "You never ever want to try putting that stuff in to your coffee. Turned me off of milk or cream in my coffee for the rest of my life." Until the end, he drank his coffee black with a ton of artificial sweetener in it, after he had to switch from regular sugar because of his diabetes. He had a lot of interesting stories about life on the submarine, about the things that they would do to entertain themselves - most of them inappropriate to my young ears but fortunately he tried his best to keep them PG-13, and one thing he did go on about a lot was the smell and the heat. Just the absolute rank humidity of all of those bodies, the cigarette smoke, cigar smoke, diesel fumes, all while the air circulation system would struggle its best to keep the foggy, swampy, smoggy air moving. And imagine all that while the two mess cooks were having a competition between them as to who could wear the same pair of socks the longest, and it's no wonder why the sailors would always say that "clean air smells funny." On top of it all, at one point while they were in dry dock, it was discovered that the radium dials on the clock in his galley had leached radiation into a whole six foot section of wall that then had to be completely torn out and refitted from the contamination... And my dad had been serving people food and baking them bread all while standing in front of that clock for hours, day, night, those little dials glowing the whole time. I can only imagine the sheer amount of chemical exposure people got, just from the food - and the radiation plus the smoke and everything in the air wasn't all of the stuff they could get in their food. My dad told me about how one chief cook that he had, had a habit of taking a bunch of the fresh oranges, injecting them with vodka via a syringe that he had gotten from the boats med supplies, plus liquor that he had brought on board, so for a good week or two during their underwater deployment, they would have the bottom of the refrigerator compartment stopped full of essentially... Walking screwdrivers that you could just peel and eat. Anything to amuse a sailor, he would say, and frankly given the conditions, I'd have looked the other way too😂😂
@hunn1580
My husband was in a submarine in the Navy and he said his favorite thing was “grocery shopping”. Essentially they would flood an empty torpedo tube in the ocean and then close it, push the water out and they had fresh fish in the tube. Super fresh sea food those nights. 😊
@Peatman
Thank you for this. The USS Cod actually rescued my grandfather and crew of the Dutch sub O-19, when it hit a reef in the Chinese Sea. 80 years ago this month. The O-19 threw them a hell of a party once back in Feemantle. There is amazing footage on Youtube of the rescue and scuttling of the O-19.
@essaboselin5252
The directions for the mashed potatoes is pretty much the same as for using instant potatoes. It sounds like the "shreds" of WWII were closer to the instant mashed potatoes of today.
@aixelsyd867
Im a Marine Vet who deployed on a Navy ship over 10 years ago. One thing you learn about red light is that it is harder to see at night. The other thing that I was taught about the ships using red light at night was to help with your circadian rhythm. The red light is less intense and easier to sleep with. If you have to do something at night you can still see but white light naturally makes you think it is daylight and therefore time to be awake. Hope my tidbit gives some insight
@Altrag_
10:29 former nuclear submariner here, everything said in this video hasn't changed much in 80 years aside from the mortality rate
@tyrusg
I loved this episode. My grandfather was a submariner and went on 9 patrols in the Pacific in WW2. He always talked about the food and especially the ice cream. He said the submarines had the best food in the Navy and when they returned from a patrol to Pearl Harbor, any remaining food onboard was transferred to the surface ships and the subs got the freshest items.
@JerryHL1911
My father served aboard the USS Darter (SS-228) and my childhood memory of his cooking was Swiss Steak. He fixed it in a pressure cooker and the gravy came straight out of the pot, served over mashed potato's. Your assessment of the meals aboard a submarine may be tinted by rose colored cookbooks. When I served on submarines in the 1970-80s fresh food and milk lasted on patrol, about 3 days. Everything else was canned or frozen. Returning from patrol we were met outside the harbor by a landing craft ("mike" boat) filled with lettuce and milk.
@clownform
this man never misses. a treasure of a show
@loriloristuff
My husband was *briefly* a bubblehead during the 70s. He had not volunteered. The whole thing went to Captain's Mast, where the skipped looked at him and said, "You volunteered to be here." He retorted, "No sir I did NOT!" The CO looked at his service record, and golly gee, he had NOT volunteered. Within 48 hours, he was on shore, and within a week, he was assigned to the Ike- where he did exceptionally well.
@Anonymous-uno
I knew someone who was a cook on a WW2 sub. He had a tiny stove to cook 200 meals a day. Lots of 16 hour days. He also made a HUGE multi layer cake for the Admirals birthday. Probably 2 feet x 3+ feet and 16" tall.. had a picture on the wall of it. A bunch of small cakes put together then frosted obviously.
@Sattva468
My granddad served on a submarine as a morse code radio operator during ww2. The experience was very traumatic for him and it caused him to lose his hearing. Thank you for your service, granddad. Rest in peace.
@TastingHistory