It is official: today was monotonous. We trekked in a straight line for 25 kilometers on flat terrain -- for nine hours. The vista never changed: an ocean of white ice, and a very cold and very blue sky.

So, let’s talk about something else: food. But wait, that’s as monotonous too. We eat the same thing every day. Clearly we didn’t come here for the food.

Alain made all our food in his own home before we departed, and he followed recipes has used to prepare for expeditions much longer than this one.

So for those who have been curious (and I know some of you are), here’s a bit about what we eat out here.

We take in 4,000 calories a day: about 40 percent are from fat, 12 percent from protein, and 48 percent from sugar. A normal diet has a ratio of 30:10:60.

Breakfast: Muesli + sugar + coffee = 900 calories

Lunch:  Cookie + cheese + chocolate = 2,300 calories

• Cookie (made with more muesli!) -1,500 calories
• Cheese - 300 calories 
• Chocolate (Belgian of course) - 500cal

Dinner: Instant soup, made with melted snow = 800 calories

The instant soup is the big highlight as we get to choose among seven different kinds -- mashed potato and pemmican are among my favorites. Pemmican soup is high in fat content and made from a traditional Native American recipe that includes dehydrated meat and vegetables. Not bad.

So to those who were wondering -- no, we are not shooting our meals out here on the ice. Just melting snow for instant soup. 

My food post was inspired not only by the monotony of my day, but also by a reader's question. If you have more, please post them. I'll do my best to reply.

[Editor's note: Over the course of two weeks, Larry Lunt, a member of NRDC's Global Leadership Council, and Alain Hubert, a Belgian explorer and founder of the International Polar Foundation, will trek some 200 miles from the town of Qaanaaq across Greenland's Humbolt Glacier, the Northern Hemisphere's largest and fastest moving river of ice. Along the way, as special contributors to OnEarth's Greenlight blog, Lunt and Hubert will post dispatches from the ice: stories of a culture and wilderness in flux and lessons for what our own future may hold. Follow the journey at our Destination: Greenland page.]

 

TRACK THE EXPEDITION ON THE MAP: