Midge Ure – The importance of food onboard

Simon: So there is high importance on food?

Massively important. So, you set your daily routine by the food and even to this day, my wife gets annoyed. Every single morning, I get up, I say, “What are we having for dinner?” She’ll go, “We haven’t even had breakfast.” I say, “I need to know what I’m having through the day” and I think it’s through the Military.

It wasn’t because when I was young I was really poor and didn’t know where my food was coming from, ‘cos we always had food, but it’s a thing that’s ingrained.

I need to know … when you’re in a submarine they print out the menu for the week. Alright, it doesn’t always go exactly how it goes, but they print out the menu and you can see what you’re having on Wednesday lunch and you think well … if I’ve got 17 hours in a day when I don’t need to be up, I’ll sleep for 7 or 8 hours of that, and I’ll be up for 7 or 8 hours and I’ll be on Watch for 7 or 8 hours.

The time I’m up, you almost plan it around the menu. So, for instance, if you like fish and chips on a Friday lunchtime, that’s the one I want to be up for. I’m not on Watch, I’m going to get a shave, I’m going to get up because like my fish and chips, and when I come off Watch later on, I don’t necessarily want, say the pizza or the chicken curry, so … and they almost run on a 2-week rolling cycle, so you know what you’re getting.

Once you’ve been at sea for 3 or 4 weeks, you know what’s coming up, so things like your Sunday roast. There’s always a Sunday roast, without pudding. You get the pudding at night when it’s pizza night, and the pizza night then becomes …

Simon: Always on Sundays.

Always. So, Sunday roast followed by pizza. The reason they do that, the pizzas are easier to make and it’s all the meat from the Sunday roast and anything else that was left over. If you got on with the Chefs, they’d make you your own bespoke pizza.

They’ll put a bit of lamb or gammon or whatever it is you want on there and they’ll do it for you.  Through the week you’ll have Wednesday night is usually curry, Tuesday night is maybe American or Italian night or … when I say Italian, it’s pasta with some meat in it or something, but it’s just that thing and you’re definitely set your days around your food.

So, you have your standard breakfast, lunch and evening meal. Something called ’10 o’clockers’ and ‘4 o’clockers’.

So, on alternate days, 10am and 4pm, the Chef will make something. He might throw a packet of biscuits out, or he might make like a tray bake, caramel shortbread or a brownie or a scone or whatever it is it’s easy to make. Hot cross buns or something, so they’ll make them in the Galley and they’ll throw them out, so on one day it will be 10 o’clock and then the next day it’s 4 o’clock in the afternoon.

So, you get into a cycle then. What if it’s 10 o’clockers today, it’s 4 o’clockers tomorrow. So, every day they do something whether it’s 10 or 4 o’clock, and again it can be Club Biscuits, it could be chocolate Clubs, and if you’ve been at sea for 10 weeks, a chocolate Club Biscuit is a prized asset.