Our Kitchen and Food
Eating local, fresh, green and healthy
When you've been out diving all day, you'll have a healthy appetite. Here's what we eat at MCP, how meals work, and why we cook the way we do.
We try to keep our carbon footprint as small as we can and to support local businesses and farmers. That means we eat local food and buy our supplies at the local market wherever possible. The climate lets fruit and vegetables grow all year round, although many things are seasonal. We also have our own vegetable beds, chicken coop and orchard, and try to be as self-sufficient as we can.
Most days of the week, the food we serve is vegetarian.
Meals through the day
From 7am, Monday to Saturday
Breakfast
If you're going diving, you need solid fuel to keep you going all day. We start the day with a continental breakfast of cereal and milk, bread, cheese, butter, jam, fresh fruit and, of course, tea and coffee. There's usually honey, chocolate spread and peanut butter too, and if you fancy eggs, you can cook your own, fresh from our chicken coop.
Between 12 and 2pm
Lunch
With lots going on during the day, lunch is served any time between 12 and 2pm. It's usually a hot meal, but if your activities take you away from base, you can pack a lunchbox or eat at a local market.
At 6.30pm, all together
Dinner
We see dinner as the time to share the highlights of the day, talk about what's going on in the world and get to know each other better, so everyone eats together. Our cooks make a variety of tasty local specialities, but we also serve plenty of Western meals, and Thai, Korean and Indian dishes come up often too. We aim for real variety, so you can go many weeks without seeing the same meal twice.
Joining in isn't mandatory, and you're welcome to go out and try something different for a change. Just let us know in advance, so we don't cook food that goes to waste.
Saturday night
On Saturday night we make an extra effort to cook something special. Sometimes it's a barbecue, other times it's build-your-own burgers, Melba's incredible lasagne or a classic Filipino adobo, with vegetarian and meat versions, of course.
Open kitchen and Sundays
We have an open kitchen policy: the kitchen is open 24/7, and you can always cook whatever you fancy. On Sundays all our staff have the day off, so if you'd like to eat on base, you'll cook for yourself. We only ask that you don't do your own cooking during the kitchen's busiest hours, when our cooks are preparing meals for everyone.
Vegetarian and vegan
Vegetarians are easy to cook for here, and our cooks are happy to make vegan meals too. Bear in mind that many substitutes you can buy at home, such as vegan butter, aren't available here, although soy milk and tofu are.
Allergies and intolerances
If you have a food allergy or are gluten intolerant, let us know before you arrive and we'll cook suitable alternatives for you. For severe allergies, please see our FAQ on allergies and gluten-free diets.
Snacks and drinks
Fresh fruit
There's always fresh fruit to help yourself to, such as pineapple, watermelon, apples, bananas and, when they're in season, mangoes.
Dive snacks
Our cooks also make great snacks for your dive days, like oat cookies, muffins and cinnamon rolls.
Drinks
At base, you can always help yourself to cold water, tea and coffee. We also have a fridge with an honesty tab and very affordable prices, where you can buy soft drinks, or even a beer once you're done diving for the day (see what we expect when it comes to alcohol).
Why we eat the way we do
There's no doubt that if more people moved away from a meat-based diet, it would ease the huge drain that meat production puts on water and other natural resources. We don't serve a strictly vegetarian diet, but we keep meat to about once a week and buy all of it locally.
When we do buy meat, we avoid factory farming. Local farmers typically keep a few free-range chickens and pigs that roam freely, eat household leftovers and live low-stress lives. They're healthy animals, a world away from industrial farming.
We aren't fanatical about it, but we avoid food additives as much as we can.
Our food at a glance
- Fruit and vegetables
- From the local market, our own vegetable beds and our orchard
- Meat
- About once a week, chicken or pork only, from local free-range farmers
- Beef and lamb
- Never, for environmental reasons
- Seafood
- Very rarely, and then bought directly from local fisherfolk who help protect the local marine protected areas and fish sustainably
- Additives
- Avoided as much as we can
Cook our food at home
Many of the dishes from our kitchen are on Veggioke, our free vegetarian recipe site. Choose a dish to see the recipe.
Melba's Cookbook
Want all the recipes in one place? Melba's Cookbook collects our volunteers' favourite dishes in a downloadable PDF. You choose the price, and all proceeds go to MCP.
Want to volunteer with us?
Send us your application, or read about a typical volunteer day first.