NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

› View Now Expedition 16 Commander Peggy Whitson: Hi, Dan Tani and I are here on board the International Space Station. And, we wanted to say Happy Thanksgiving to all our NASA select viewers. We feel particularly privileged to be up here on board the International Space Station this Thanksgiving. And we're looking forward to our activities this week. We have a busy week with EVAs and we hope that you are also having a great Thanksgiving.

Flight Engineer Dan Tani: In my family, we gather for Thanksgiving. We spend a minute to think about the things we're thankful for. Of course, I'm thankful for the continued health of my family and my loved ones. Also this year, I'm thankful that I'm safely on the space station and conducting our mission successfully and having a great time doing it. I'm thankful for all the people on the ground that support us and are tireless in their devotion to the space station program and to the space program in general and to us as a crew. And I'm thankful for Peggy, my crewmate, having a great commander and a great crew mate on board and also with Yuri. When we think about Thanksgiving, we think about the pilgrims coming to the new world and expanding their knowledge of their universe, and of making new discoveries, and looking for a better life for themselves. Thanksgiving was an opportunity to be thankful for their survival in a very difficult time. And I think that may be where we are in the space program of human space adventures. Thinking that, well here we are safely on the space station. We have setbacks, but we can solve them and hopefully this is the start of our generation or our world expanding our knowledge and learning how to live in space and expand our knowledge out of low-Earth orbit.

Whitson: we would like to wish everyone on Earth a Happy Thanksgiving and especially, our NASA family. We're thankful to be a part of that family and we wanted to share with you some of the things that we might be eating on Thanksgiving Day. Do a little show and tell of some of the things we have onboard here. We have a variety of different food types on board the International Space Station. One item Dan is showing here, a little bit of a close-up, is freeze-dried shrimp cocktail. It's a favorite of almost everybody onboard the station. Another food type we have is found in cans. A lot of the Russian meats are served in cans. This is lamb with vegetables, a very popular one onboard. Although, Dan and I like the chicken. That's why there's none of that left.

Another type of food is prepackaged, we have some sent up from the ground that comes up in packages that … and has enough preservatives to be stable up here and so we have fun eating those as well. Seems a little bit more like home that way instead of eating everything out of a bag.

Tani: We have, sometimes we have foods that are acceptable for us to have up on orbit, that have enough preservative qualities. Sometimes friends and family are able to send them up, and my wife sent up some thinly sliced, looks like ham from Italy and we're going to save that for Thanksgiving and open that up as a treat.

We call this Barbie bread. These are little itty-bitty loafs of bread from the Russian program. They provide these breads and they're cute and delicious. These, there are different types, these are rye breads. They have other types of white breads and wheat breads and they're delicious compliments to our food.

Finally, we don't go anywhere in the universe without chocolates. And these are the popular candy coated chocolates and they're popular because of the color and the fun, and I think they say they melt in your mouth and not in the lab.

We, a lot of the food we eat, apparently a third or so is premade and prepackaged in a foil pack, and even though the label doesn't make it sound or look very, particularly appetizing, we find delicious things like meat, stews, lasagna … This is pudding. This is basically technology that is developed for meals ready to eat for troops overseas.

Whitson: Our motto on board the station is, it's all about the sauce. The best part of eating here is you have to have the right sauce to put on it, and typically the hotter the sauce the better. This one obviously is our favorite. We're ready to put some water in there and rinse the rest of that out because we want to get extra.

So Happy Thanksgiving to all of you on the ground. We're thrilled to be here and have the opportunity to continue our assembly and we wish all the best for our friends and family and the NASA family as well. Thanks so much.

Tani: Happy Thanksgiving everybody. Thank you very much. › View Now