This follows up on some comments of Sally's, mentioning the "dining room" offhand (and asking if Avon could get the computers to produce decent coffee--I'd say this is a two-part question--I'm sure he could, to his specifications, but I don't think extra-dark-roast espresso is particularly popular with anyone else in the crew).

I do tend to think of Blake at least trying to establish regular meals in the interest of crew cohesion. There are a couple of problems with that, including the crew. In canon, there are an implausible number of instances when they're all awake at once-- although of course it's all hands on deck during a space battle, wouldn't the normal pattern be two people on watch, two sleeping, and two having a rest session (or one, post-Gan)? And that means that whoever just woke up probably wouldn't feel like tucking into steak-and-kidney pie even if it IS dinner time for four other people.

I don't know why, but for some reason I always think of the kitchen and dining room as either being behind Zen or on the right, mirroring the corridor that we can see to the left of Zen in the usual flight deck shot.

In Horizon, we learn that the ship has enough concentrated food for a thousand person-years, but that doesn't mean that that's what they eat--those could be just back-up emergency supplies. Actually, considering the size of the ship, not only could they have a hydroponic farm, they could probably keep livestock--chickens or rabbits, at the least.

BTW, I think it's significant that there are many instances when the crew are shown consuming beverages, but at no time are they having a proper sit-down meal, although the bad guys do at least twice I can remember (Moloch and Traitor).

-(Y)