Similar to their friends and family in the U.S., astronauts living and working on the International Space Station are ready to carb-load with a traditional Thanksgiving feast more than 200 miles above Earth.
“I’m going to try and make it as much like home as we can,” Expedition 50 Commander Shane Kimbrough said in a NASA video message.
The NASA astronaut gave a preview of what the holiday will be like on the orbital laboratory for its six-person crew.
“It is a workday for us. So we’re not going to get the day off like most folks in the United States,” Kimbrough said. “We’re going to work all day and then we’re going to have a big evening dinner.”
Kimbrough showed off the packets of food prepared for the crew. “Our food is a little bit different,” he said of the pouches.
On the Space Station menu: dehydrated turkey, cornbread dressing, green beans with mushrooms, mashed potatoes, candied yams, cherry-blueberry cobbler and to drink sweet tea with lemon.
Kimbrough, from Atlanta, said he can’t go without the southern staple.
Interested Earthlings can dine astronaut style and make NASA’s “Out of this world cornbread dressing.” Thankfully, there’s “no freeze-drying required” with the recipe the space agency posted to NASA.gov.
Mission Control also promised to beam up some live football games — "to complete the experience," Kimbrough said.
It will be the second Thanksgiving in space for Kimbrough and the third for American Peggy Whitson, who arrived at the orbiting lab Saturday. One Frenchman and three Russians round out the crew.
Kimbrough said the U.S. astronauts will celebrate the holiday with their international crew.
The Associated Press contributed this report.