GEORGE PORRETTA

Chief Petty Officer

MARCH 27, 2003 · For troops on the road to Baghdad, food comes in the form of MREs -- meals ready to eat. For sailors in the U.S. Navy, the food selection is considerably better. Chief Petty Officer George Porretta is in charge of ordering and storing all of the food that is consumed by the 5,000 sailors aboard the aircraft carrier USS Constellation in the Persian Gulf. This is his NPR War Diary.

In my storeroom, I keep on hand almost $2 million worth of food. To give you a rough example of what we go through in a month, I utilize about 10,000 pounds of fresh potatoes, 7,000 pounds of fresh lettuce. I go through 3,500 pounds of butter. We get everything from milk, eggs, cheese, all the way up to lobster and candy bars. Right now, we're allowed $8.43 per day per man. We've got 5,000 sailors on board here, so you're looking at something around $40,000 a day we can figure out a menu with.

My wife is Indonesian, so I kind of miss some of her cooking. It's real spicy food, the curries and stuff. But I miss being around the table with my family. That's probably the biggest part of it.

	USS Constellation