Ryan dispatch: I used to think Eric was crazy when he would casually mention that he drinks his lunch on polar trips. On days like today, I have come to appreciate the "part of last nights dinner becomes today's lunch soup" philosophy.

Instead of going on and on about how brutal and hard this trip is I figure lets get the topic shifted and write about specifics of how we do this kind of expedition on the Arctic Ocean. And today's topic... Food.

Breakfast is an easy one. I am of the old fashioned school of straightforward pack 55 bags of increasing caloric granola, oatmeal, powdered milk, sugar, butter mixture, add hot water and my coveted one cup of instant coffee, lets roll.

Dinner is also easy. Most everyone I know goes with again an increasing caloric bag of freeze dried dinners. Bam, add boiling water and you are golden. Variety comes with what you bring and some pre dinner snack food for comfort and curb the hunger.

Now back to drinking your lunch... You see we save a small amount each night from our dinner bag and in the morning put that with boiling water into these super cool Stanley insulated food jars and that ride along in the front of the sled. Throughout the day we consistently eat parts of bars, chocolate and nuts etc. At stops for 2 minutes while we ponder our precarious position and questionable life choices. The Probar Superfood Slam bars are awesome for this because lots of energy in a compact bar! But throughout the day, especially days like today, cold, biting wind and white, we reach that mid day "soup break" and out comes 4 minutes of shear warm goodness to warm the old bones.

Distance traveled: 3.16 nautical miles

Image: Eric and the Stanley