Helen FieldsScience Writer

I’m sorry, it’s taken me much too long to get to this. After my successful oreo inquiry, I knew had to get to the bottom of the question: how do the shipboard Ritz crackers (prepackaged in pairs, for soup-related usage) compare to the civilian Ritz I bought in Unalaska? You may recall, the shipboard oreos are smaller than regular oreos and they taste worse.

I was already pretty sure that the ship’s Ritz crackers tasted worse, and today a side-by-side taste comparison confirmed that they kind of taste like plastic. This isn’t surprising, because they live in plastic, and the ones in the box are wrapped in that nice wax-paper-y sleeve[oops - it's plastic, too. but less flavorful plastic, or something]. So the only question remaining was: are they smaller?

And here is the shocking conclusion. They aren’t smaller. On closer examination, the ship’s Ritz actually turn out to be *bigger*. I know. I was shocked.

Nilla wafers appeared in the snack bins today before lunch, but unfortunately I won’t be able to advance knowledge on that front – I didn’t bring any with me to compare them to. (My roommate suggests sending a shipwide e-mail to see if anyone brought some, but I have limits.)