Compiled aboard the colony ship Meridian during the evacuation of Settlement Seven
by Elena Voss, mess officer
I began writing these recipes on Day 3 of boarding, when we still thought we had time. By Day 47, when I write this introduction, I understand that a cookbook is a strange monument. But perhaps that's exactly what makes it worth keeping.
Serves 20 // Prep time: 3 hours
Ingredients:
Method:
Warm the milk until just tepid—blood temperature, my grandmother would say, though she was a surgeon and thought of everything in terms of the body. Dissolve yeast and sugar in the milk. Let it foam for ten minutes while you sift the flour with salt.
Beat eggs into the yeast mixture. Add butter, melted but not hot. Pour wet into dry, stirring first with a wooden spoon, then with your hands when it becomes too thick. Knead for fifteen minutes. You want silk.
Let rise for an hour in a warm place. We put ours near the air recyclers. Punch down, shape into rolls. Let rise again, forty minutes. Bake at 190°C for twenty-five minutes, until golden.
On the necessity of sweetness:
My grandmother made these every Founding Day. She learned from her grandmother, who brought the recipe from Earth in the First Wave, ingredients transcribed in fading pen on actual paper. That paper is in the archives, which means it's ash now, or will be soon.
Three hundred people in the mess hall the first night wanted comfort. I made twelve batches. We used a week's worth of butter and eggs, and no one complained. There are logistics officers who will tell you this was wasteful. They are correct, and they are wrong. Morale is its own form of fuel.
I watched families eat these rolls slowly, reverently. I watched a man cry into his napkin. Taste is the fastest route to memory, faster even than photographs. And we all left our photographs behind.
Serves 30 // Prep time: 45 minutes
Ingredients:
Method:
Brown the meat in batches in the largest pressure cookers. Don't crowd the pan—you want a crust. This takes patience. Remove meat, sauté onions until they weep, then add celery, garlic. When your eyes water, it's ready.
Add tomato paste. Let it darken for three minutes—this is important. Deglaze with stock, scraping up the fond. Return meat to pot. Add vegetables, herbs. Seal pressure cooker. Cook 35 minutes at high pressure.
Natural release for 15 minutes. The meat should shred at a glance.
On the food we call home:
This is not my grandmother's stew—hers had wine, fresh herbs she grew on her kitchen windowsill, a recklessness with butter that bordered on obscene. But this is what I can make with what we have, and it tastes close enough that people stop talking when they eat it.
In the evacuation briefings, they told us to bring essential documents, medications, one small bag of personal items. They did not say: bring your mother's handwriting, the smell of your kitchen, the weight of a particular afternoon. We tried anyway. Someone smuggled a guitar. Someone else brought a chess set hand-carved by their daughter. Another person brought a jar of soil.
I brought three kilograms of dried spices in my personal allowance, and I have been judicious with them, and I will not apologize.
Serves 40 // Prep time: 30 minutes
Ingredients:
Method:
Toast rice in butter until translucent. Add lentils, spices. Pour in hot stock. Bring to boil, reduce to simmer. Cover. Cook 20 minutes. Don't lift the lid. Turn off heat, let steam 10 minutes more.
Fluff with a fork. Serve with yogurt if available (it isn't).
On the mathematics of feeding:
The chief logistics officer, Marcus Webb, came to see me on Day 9. He brought spreadsheets. We have 8,000 people on this ship, he said. We have enough food for sixteen months at current consumption rates. But we don't know how long the journey will take. We need to stretch everything by 30%.
I asked him if he knew what happened to morale when people feel perpetually hungry. He said we didn't have a choice.
This is the first recipe where I intentionally made less than enough. The pilaf is good—flavorful, filling. But no one gets seconds. I watch people scrape their plates with the edges of their forks, trying to catch every grain. I watch them not look at each other while they do it.
My grandmother used to say: a good meal is one where everyone leaves the table satisfied but not full. She meant something else by it.
Serves 45 // Prep time: 20 minutes
Ingredients:
Method:
Put everything in a pot. Simmer two hours. Strain if you want, or don't. Adjust seasoning. Serve hot.
On hierarchy:
Officers get protein three times a week. General population gets it once. This is, I'm told, necessary. Officers need to maintain decision-making capacity. I serve both groups, and I don't comment.
But I make this soup from the carcasses of their chickens, and I make it taste like something worth eating, and when people thank me, I feel both proud and complicit.
Makes 200 pieces
Ingredients:
Method:
Mix flour with just enough water to form a stiff dough. No yeast. Roll thin. Cut into squares. Poke holes with a fork. Bake low and slow until completely dry, 2-3 hours. Store indefinitely.
On what endures:
Someone made a joke at breakfast yesterday, called these biscuits "ship's bread like the ancient sailors ate." Everyone laughed, but it was a thin sound.
I didn't tell them that hardtack was designed to last years in a ship's hold. That sailors broke their teeth on it. That they dunked it in whatever liquid they had—coffee, soup, rum—to soften it enough to eat. That it was sustenance without joy, calories without comfort.
But I also didn't tell them that those sailors survived. That hardtack was the food that carried humanity across oceans, between continents, through the gaps in the map where monsters used to be drawn.
The astrophysicist, Dr. Sarabi, told me yesterday that we've lost contact with Settlement Seven. The solar flares are worse than anyone predicted. She said this quietly, while picking up her rations, and then she asked me if I had any extra salt.
I gave her my personal supply. She cried. I pretended not to notice.
No cooking required
Ingredients:
Method:
Open packet. Eat. Repeat twice daily.
On the breaking point:
I stopped cooking three days ago. There's nothing left to cook with. The last of the fresh vegetables went two weeks ago. The frozen meat stores are being held for "emergency use only," which I suppose means we haven't reached emergency yet.
Marcus came to see me again. He looked older. He said: you don't need to run the kitchens anymore. We're on full rations now. He meant the protein bars. He meant: your job is obsolete.
I told him I wasn't leaving. He asked what I thought I could possibly do in a kitchen with no food.
Serves 30
Ingredients:
Method:
Rinse lentils daily in clean water. Let them sprout in darkness. When tails emerge, they're alive again. Blanch quickly. Dress with vinegar, spices, salt. Serve cold.
On making something from nothing:
I found the lentils in a corner of dry storage. They were labeled for planting, for when we reach wherever we're going. I took 5% of the supply. I did not ask permission.
It turns out that you can grow food even on a ship with no soil, no sun. You just need water, time, and the biological imperative of a seed.
People cried when I served this. Not because it was delicious—it wasn't, particularly—but because it was green. Because it was alive. Because something was still growing.
Serves everyone
Ingredients:
Method:
Boil water. Pour into cup. Hold the cup in both hands. Close your eyes. Remember what you're missing. Drink slowly.
On rituals:
We're out of coffee. We're out of tea. We have water purified and recycled and purified again, tasting of nothing and faintly of plastic.
But every morning, I see people in the mess with their cups, sitting in the same seats, performing the same motions. Hands wrapped around warmth. Eyes closed for the first sip. The slight pause before swallowing.
My grandmother used to say that humans are the only animals that need rituals to survive. That we don't just eat—we dine. We don't just drink—we toast. We turn biological necessity into meaning.
I set out cups every morning at 0600. I boil water. I pour it. People come. We pretend together.
Serves 10 (don't ask)
Ingredients:
Method:
Don't document this. Don't tell Marcus. Soak chickpeas overnight. Cook until tender. Meanwhile, caramelize onions—take your time, this is the foundation. Add curry powder, bloom it in the oil. Add tomatoes, coconut milk reconstituted with water, chickpeas. Simmer 30 minutes. Adjust seasoning. It should be complex, layered, alive.
Serve to people who need it most. Families with children. The elderly. The ones whose eyes have gone flat.
On civil disobedience:
There's an underground economy on this ship now. People trade everything—personal items, labor, ration credits, favors. There's a black market for extra food, for alcohol fermented in hidden corners, for anything that makes this bearable.
I am part of it now. I made this curry with ingredients that came from a dozen different sources, none of them official. I served it after-hours to people who showed up with a password. I portioned it carefully, making sure everyone got the same amount.
It was the best meal I've cooked since we left. Everyone who ate it smiled. A child asked for seconds, and I had just enough.
Marcus knows. He hasn't said anything. Yesterday he showed up at 2300, after his shift. He didn't say the password. I served him anyway.
We ate in silence. When he finished, he said: thank you. Then: be careful. Then: keep going.
Serves 100
Ingredients:
Method:
Make dough from flour, water, salt. Knead until smooth. Rest 30 minutes. Roll thin. Cut into long strips. Boil in batches. Serve in broth.
On arrival:
The captain announced this morning that we're close. Two weeks, maybe less. There's a planet. It's habitable. We're going to make it.
I made noodles because noodles are celebratory in every culture I know. Because they're long, symbolizing longevity. Because they require time and attention and hope that there will be someone to eat them.
The mess hall was full today. People were talking, laughing. Someone started singing. Others joined in.
I served noodles for six hours straight. My hands cramped. My back ached. I have never been happier in my life.
Makes 50 loaves
Ingredients:
Method:
Mix everything. Let it rise. Punch down. Let it rise again. Shape into rounds. Score the tops. Bake until the ship smells like a home we haven't found yet.
On what we carry forward:
We land tomorrow. I'm writing this in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. I've been making bread for eighteen hours. Everyone who can hold a spoon has been helping—folding dough, shaping loaves, tending the ovens.
This bread will be the first thing we eat on new soil. I'm putting seeds in it—from the crops we'll plant, from the gardens we'll grow. I'm putting in every spice I have left. I'm putting in everything.
My grandmother's recipe, the one on paper, the one that burned—I've been reconstructing it from memory. I think I've got it right. I think she would forgive me if I don't.
Someone asked me earlier what I'll cook when we land, when we have fresh food again, real ingredients, time and space and sunlight. I said I don't know. The truth is I'm afraid I've forgotten how. The truth is I'm afraid I'll never want to cook anything again. The truth is I can't imagine not cooking.
We're calling the planet Hope. On the nose, I know. But I've learned something these past weeks: subtlety is a luxury. Sometimes you need to name things exactly what they are.
Tomorrow we'll break bread together under a new sun. We'll eat with our hands. We'll taste flour and water and salt and survival. And someone—probably many someones—will cry.
I've saved a portion of dough. I'm going to keep it, feed it, maintain it. A starter, continuous, carried forward. My grandmother would understand.
Added one month after landing
The gardens are growing. We have vegetables now, protein from the local ecology (carefully tested), grains in the field. Yesterday someone brought me eggs from the first clutch of chickens hatched on-planet. I held them in my hands and wept.
I'm cooking real meals again. Roasted vegetables with herbs. Soups thick with cream. Breads that rise high and golden. And people are forgetting, slowly, what it was like. The hunger. The fear. The protein bars.
But I'm keeping this cookbook. I'm teaching others these recipes—the ones from scarcity, from invention, from desperation. Not because we'll need them again (though we might), but because they're part of the story now. Part of how we got here.
My grandmother used to say that every recipe is a story, and every meal is a memory being made. These meals—these strange, improvised, impossible meals—they're the story of our survival. They're the taste of the gap between there and here.
And whenever someone asks me what I learned in those nine weeks, I think about lentils sprouting in darkness. About bread made from nothing. About people sharing what little they had. About the way a child's face lights up over a bowl of curry that shouldn't exist.
I tell them: I learned that cooking is an act of defiance. That feeding people is how you insist on a future. That as long as someone is making food with intention, with care, with love—even and especially when it seems pointless—we're still human. We're still here.
We're still home, wherever that is.
This cookbook is dedicated to the 8,000 souls aboard the Meridian, who ate hardtack and called it bread, who rationed hope and made it last, who carried only what they could hold and somehow carried everything.
And to my grandmother, who taught me that the kitchen is where we practice resurrection.