MEAT

Christmas weekend in the galley featured nearly 1,000 pounds of beef, 350 pounds of duck, 200 pounds of ham, cases of lobster and scallops for bisque, shrimp for shrimp cocktail, and New York strip steaks for brunch the next day.

My contribution to the Christmas feast was trimming about 30 of the 100 or so beef tenderloins—MEAT, organizing and helping construct 800 “vegetarian Wellingtons” (prefab mushroom patty, cheese, pesto, and asparagus, wrapped like a present up in puff pastry), carving roast duck breast—MEAT, and most importantly, asking the powers that be over and over and over and over and over for tasks to do in the days leading up to the big event so all the prep could get done.

The bakery made bagels from scratch and they were amazing.  I didn’t realize how much I miss those truly good, chewy buggers.  Oh yeah, and MEAT—we cured salmon lox to go on them.

Today is actually my Christmas day off, and I’ve thoroughly enjoyed holing myself up in my room, arranging a trumpet part to accompany a pretty song I’d like to sing.  But the sun is shining, so I better get outside and hike. 

Please enjoy this photo:

And this one of our activity notice board, with a crazed Frosty Boy machine chasing down penguins from his fiery lair:

Christmas Time Is Here

I’ve developed a Pavlovian response to a dingy, funky old building.  Hotel California might have the shabbiest rust-colored carpet in town, old janky doors, and the musk of countless years of sweaty people sharing bunk rooms, but it is where I go to have silly parties and fun rehearsals.  There are currently two inhabitants, one of whom is my singer/guitarist buddy, who strums loud enough and pours me whiskey until I’m unselfconsciously trilling “West Virginia, Oh My Home.”  Luckily, I balance the influx of country music in my life, returning the favor with classical vocal coachings on “Ave Maria.”  We haven’t broken any windows yet, but the other HoCal resident stopped by to make sure everything was ok…and I think he secretly wants to join us.

Christmas week is upon us, and is full of celebration, which equals drinking and music.  Sure, I’ll sing with the choir at church tonight, but then I’ll head to the Vehicle Maintenance Facility’s holiday party, where you can take a shot with the Grinch and get a picture with Santa on our version of a Mars rover.  A couple nights ago was the Waste Barn acoustic show.  The department clears out the large building where all our trash and recycling is sorted, creates fantastic scenery, and invites the non-thrasher-rock bands to perform.  This year’s theme was Whoville, and I was happy to find some of the decorations repurposed after the show.

After weeks of sun and fog, we finally got a nice snowy evening last night.  I skipped out in it to see the seals lying, languid as always, heads into the wind.  That set the mood nicely to bake cookies for my secret Santa present in a night-time kitchen eerily quiet and serene.  It was great to be in jeans and a sweatshirt, touch everything with my bare hands, and eat the dough right there at the table.  It’s a world away from opening bags of meat and rushing around at 6am.

Here’s a little Christmas present: someone(s) started printing Missed Connections, a sort of personals/way to get in touch with someone with whom you might have shared a spark.  The first edition featured some clever irony, and inspired me to continue in a similar vein.  I hope you enjoy my first submission.

You probably don’t realize how much you turn me on, waiting in line every morning, bleary-eyed, tongue-tied with sleep. I get a little thrill when you set your plate in front of me, and those few extra seconds while you struggle to remember the order that never changes give me a chance to work my penetrating stare. Do you hear the suppressed desire in my voice when I coyly ask, “What would you like?” I long for you to push your omelet aside and take me on top of the flat-top grill. If you feel the same way, Mr. Bacon-Onion-and-Cheddar, let me know you read this and are game by spicing up the order with some jalapenos.

Fun Stuff

Last day off was spent climbing Castle Rock and performing at the Coffee House—pretty ideal.  It was a balmy 30 degrees with little wind, and I hiked with two other hearty girls up the groomed, gradually sloping path.  There are little emergency shelters along the way and we stopped to read some previous visitors random thoughts in the log books.  They’re painted bright red, are pretty comfy when the sun shines in the windows, and have sleeping bags and snacks should you actually need to hole up there for a while.

The climb up only takes about ten minutes, but it looks really dramatic.  From the top you can see smoking Mt. Erebus, an active but relaxed volcano (don’t worry, we’re not going to get blown up), the open water past the edge of the ice shelf, edges of calving glacier mouths, and on that day a cool patchwork pattern of sunlight through the thin clouds.

I’ve been lucky enough to rehearse and play with some great guys here—acoustic guitar, fiddle, and sax.  They indulged me by playing along to the jazz standard “Autumn Leaves,” and I overcame my horror and actually enjoy singing backup for a few country songs (“When the Stars Come Out” and “Fire Away” by Chris Stapleton; possibly a “Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain” and “West Virginia, My Home”).  We’re planning some fun things for the coming week of Christmas parties and the rest of the season, including possibly the best country song ever written, “Piss Up a Rope.”  Check it out if you don’t know it…

My week continued pretty good from there: a solid night of rehearsal, a moderately riotous galley Christmas party, a showing of one of my favorite movies (“True Stories” with David Byrne and The Talking Heads), and a classy bottle-of-wine-and-philosophy-discussion evening.  Plus, dramatic banks of fog rolling into town:

As far as work, I have three words for this week in food: Hot Dog Buffet.  I’m looking forward to making food for Christmas.

Wherein the Author Acquaints the Reader with Fun Names of Stuff

12 Yellow STD Blankets

You saw it here first, being saved for that special someone:

Oscar the Grouch, Rico Suave, Sassy B, and Big Ben:

Que Sera Sera

In related news, I thought it would be fun to estimate the remaining amounts of various foodstuffs “on the continent,” which is the way we put it when we want to be extra dramatic.  Such as, “There’s only 20 gallons of ketchup left of the continent.”*

*This is an exaggeration, but there is an unspecified ketchup shortage.  I also discovered there is a mayonnaise shortage when I had to make (ugheeewbarf) Hidden Valley Blue Cheese Dressing, a flavor packet whose recipe indicates the addition buttermilk (or dehydrated milk powder + water + lemon juice), mayo, and blue cheese crumbles.  (Incidentally, there is *not* at all a shortage of blue cheese crumbles.)

We can’t be sure how the pantries of neighboring Russian, Chinese, Argentine, and other bases are holding out, but since we far outnumber their combined population, and I doubt they have much in the way of such things as bacon-flavored MSG bullion, a.k.a. Bacon Base, let’s round the estimates to the contents of our own coffers.

- Bacon Base: unlimited

- Vodka: NONE!!!!  EMERGENCY!!!!

- Boca Burgers: hundreds of thousands; lay off, vegetarians—see, we totally care about you

- All-Purpose Flour: virtually zero, because, gosh, it’s real hard to remember the difference between something silly like different flours, so they just pick a random one each week, like cake flour, and treat the bakers to a professional challenge to make do

- Chicken Gyro Meat: approx. one million pounds, despite our politically-motivated disappearing campaign

- “Extreme Supreme” premade guacamole in a bag: 80 pounds; dangerously low considering our bi-weekly* burrito night

*that’s twice a week, folks

- Starkist Tuna: 50 pounds; currently rationed to once a week at the deli bar as it is immediately consumed by weight lifters and the three women on base that blow-dry their hair

- “Hand-Placed”* Molded Turkey Breast: any is too much

*So…the people in the factory risk their limbs to transfer the mechanically separated meat into the hydraulic press, so it’s technically hand-crafted deli meat, and we are bluffing that it merits inclusion at a carving station?!?!

- Canned Stewed Prunes: statistically infinite; probably a good thing, though, to help us digest all the rest

Greetings from Waylon

I hope you’re thinking, “Oh boy, another installment in the 478-part series of ‘Claire in Antarctica.’”  Just when it seemed like there wasn’t much more to say on ice, rocks, random objects, or mediocre food, I’m back with an irresistible rejoinder that in retrospect might be better left unsaid.  This is really just a constructive excuse to procrastinate making my secret Santa gift.  Now let’s dive in.

At long last, I’m enjoying my Thanksgiving holiday.  I guess there was some crazy Mad-Max-themed party last night but I only saw some scruffily dressed people wandering into the bar afterward.  I caught the last few songs of McNut Punch, this season’s Metallica cover band.  But it was rather sweaty and the female bartenders had better patrons to cater to than me, so I had a tame night of it. 

Here's a nice view of the pressure ridges, which I saw again:

The previous two evenings were spent in the great outdoors, hiking a new (to me) path on the ice shelf over to the New Zealand base, and getting another look at the pressure ridges.  It’s been in the 30s and sunny, with barely any wind—sweatshirt weather.  I could actually feel the warmth of the sun on my back, and it was good.  With almost no snow in town, it was nice and Antarctica-y to be out on a glittering white plane, sun sparkling back up, and deep blue mountains butting up against the light blue sky.  At the Tatty Flag, the Kiwi bar, you can get much better wine for less money than here.  And if you sit at the piano looking at sheet music, just maybe the musician you respect and enjoy the most in town will ask if you play, and end up putting together a set with you for the Christmas show(!).

It’s a good thing I’m experienced with carrying keyboard parts down the road.  My loaner comes with a comically tattered cardboard case I reinforced by wrapping my scarf around it.  My guitarist buddy lives a couple hundred yards away with almost no neighbors, so it’s a good place to rehearse, and now I get bonus exercise. 

It was a very good week for mail—packages from mom and dad, and Matt, and emails galore.  Thank you everybody for writing and fun news and love.  And speaking of love, a thrilling addition to life here just became public: McMurdo Missed Connections.  I’ll track down my favorites and share some select solicitations soon.

Here is my new little penguin friend, Waylon.  I got him at the craft fair today.  He’s pinned on my wall now, but if he’s a good boy he’ll get to go on a Christmas tree next year.

Fit for a King

A week that starts with doomed inadequate prep followed by a 13-hour day luckily improved.  I suppose the plus side of running out of food halfway through Thanksgiving is that we don’t have to secretly recycle leftovers for the next couple weeks.  Really, the only extra food I dealt with was delicious re-cooked rib eye—left in the oven so that nearly three inches of fat rendered into crisp cracklins (sort of a cousin to extra crispy thick bacon).  This got chopped up and put in quesadillas.  If we had the wherewithal, something quite fancy could have come of it, with fresh guacamole and such.

That was for taco Tuesday.  Today’s food adventure (charade?) was seitan à la king (a.k.a. Satan, King of the Underworld, Stew).  Not sure if the roots of this dish trace back to Louis XIV, Henry VIII, or that guy from “The King’s Speech” (all big wheat gluten fans).  Don’t we all deserve protein chunks coated in luxurious béchamel (canned powdered white sauce mix), with just-picked (frozen for several years) peas, pearl onions, and carrots, a bag’s worth (1 C. minced) of garlic (my creative flair), flavored with the finest parsley and paprika?  Fit for a king, served to the madding crowd at McMurdo.

I think we’ve gone through the five-week menu cycle three times now, which is not a ton of repetition, but I suppose enough time has passed that I’m beginning to yearn for novelties.  A tiny slackening of rope from the powers that be have made possible inventive daily “action” dishes, yielding some awesome results: tonkotsu somen noodles with chasu pork (like ramen), made-to-order French dip sandwiches, niko dango (Asian glazed meatballs), and pear + bleu cheese + caramelized onion crêpes.  These items are made in much smaller batches than the rest of our food, and usually have a bit more love put into them because they’re something we’re interested in.  We take some pans of wan, gray pork chops or a few cases of oozy nearly-lost pears and are genuinely excited about transforming them.  (I’m using “we” a bit vicariously here, but I did cook noodles and flatten out a crêpe…and eat lots of crêpes.)

These tiny victories help restore pride in what we do.  Sure, it’s essential that scientists and forklift operators eat (and lots of them happily get double cheese-burgers three times a week), but it’s nice to give them something they’ll really enjoy.  Word travels fast when there’s something good, and people come up with an eager expression, looking for a little bit of contentment and satisfaction.  Sharing that feeling about the same object or experience is basically what I think community is.

Here’s me and my favorite rock:

Special Thanksgiving Report

Hey there, hope everybody had a good Thanksgiving eating and family/friending it up.  I thought it would be interesting to dissect how to feed 1,000 ravenous cold-weather workers on an entirely food-based holiday.  We barely even have football to distract us here (18-hour time delay plus rebroadcasting), and in order to fit everyone in the galley at some point, people sign up for one of three meal times—meaning they are extra crazily starved, waiting all the way from breakfast to 3, 5, or 7pm for their big meal.

Despite some impulsive actions and questionable life choices, I think it’s safe to say I’m on the rational end of the thought spectrum.  I like to plan.  And more importantly, I tend to base my planning on reality: facts, informed opinions and estimations, whatever evaluative bits are at hand.  It’s also helpful to build flexibility into one’s plans, of course.  You always need to react and adjust to what actually happens versus how you imagined it would go, as well as keep something in your pocket for the unexpected, like a foreign invasion for instance.

I’m going to try to be diplomatic, both to exercise a positive attitude and on the off chance someone reading this wants to fire me.  Maybe our bosses’ own optimism and/or faith in our skill led them to not even decide a menu until a week ago; not specify what they wanted for those dishes; not assign prep to any particular team or person; not decide to start cutting the 60 turkeys in half until two days before; underestimate the amount needed of every side dish by a factor of at least three; and only truly realize the deep deep shit they walked us into during the first of three giant feast seatings.

Picture six people standing in a row, each with a cutting board, each with a sack of potatoes.  Now picture two more such set-ups across the table.  (If you’re keeping score, that’s eight people times 25 pounds per sack, about five sacks each, for 1,000 pounds—about 2.5 times what we prepped before Thanksgiving.  Roughly 1,000 pounds of potatoes were consumed, which is not that crazy for 1,000 people when you think about it.  Key takeaway: THINK ABOUT IT, JUST FOR ONE MINUTE, AND YOU’D KNOW 500 POUNDS OF POTATOES IS [CENSORED FOR OBSCENITY], ahem, not enough FOR 1,000 PEOPLE.)  Before and after the potato brigade, we peeled and cut a couple hundred pounds of carrots and sweet potatoes.  These were immediately cooked and served.  If only some of those fun times had been had the previous day, when I fumed over the asinine process of blanching, icing, draining, and later toweling off root veggies so that the oil could more closely cling to them previous to their roasting.  Now, we were able to cut down the roasting time from 30 to 10 minutes, all with a mere five hours of unnecessary and infuriating prep, which all went out the window when we just roasted the additional 300% more of them for 30 minutes in a mad frenzy day-of.

Thank you for letting me get that off my chest.  The pies, thankfully, were amazing—the bakery folks made all the crusts from scratch with actual butter, and I enjoyed some fantastic pecan pie and cranberry cheesecake.  Let’s all just remember dessert, and that we got a free glass of wine, and that we will not let this happen again.

Yes, I would like to science please

This is a sign on my dorm’s bulletin board (advertising lab tours) that’s pretty adorable:

Speaking of which, I got learned some scienceology this week.  Every Sunday night there’s a science lecture.  The teams doing fieldwork here report in laymen’s terms on their research.  Apparently, teeny tiny snails the size of lentils, officially known as pteropods, are sentinels of ocean acidification.  These scientists were refreshingly well-spoken presenters.  They talked about how cool (haha) it is to dive here, and the unique challenges of trying to do anything with your hands underwater wearing multiple pairs of thick gloves.  They collect specimens, scope them out in the lab, and subject them to varying conditions to measure how they’re affected and how they might possibly adapt.  Long story short, as carbon dioxide gets swallowed by the ocean, it is broken apart into oxygen and carbolic acid (maybe? I think?).  Our snail-friends’ shells get eaten away, which is sad, as they are pretty, and unfortunate, as they are a key link in the food web between phytoplankton and d&jk#xlpwty, which eat pteropods.  I’m pretty sure I’m now qualified to be a marine biologist.

I am also now qualified to be a space physicist (pretty sure that’s what we’re called).  The friendly young grad student who runs the LIDAR operation invited some kitchen folks out to show and tell about upper atmospheric iron ions.  With his toolbox of laser parts—

—he blasts lasers (pew! pew!) into the sky, and records the distance and speed and stuff at which they reflect back off of iron particles.  This, too, tells us about global warming.  You might be beginning to think that Antarctica is a vast left-wing conspiracy to brainwash people into believing humans affect nature…

After a few solid weeks of dense gray clouds and limited visibility, we’ve shifted to rather warm weather (it’s 30F today!), and I lucked out with a totally gorgeous, sunny evening for a pressure ridge tour.  The ridges (where the sea ice and pack ice meet near the shore) have been building and pushing up higher over the last few weeks, and a mama seal had a pup right smack on the trail we hike.  We walked nice and slow and quiet and they seemingly remained asleep, big and little piles of fat-fur.

Oh yeah, and I work in the kitchen.  So, roughly nine hours a day, I make-believe a jar of capers, a handful of anchovies, tomato sauce, and leftover breaded-conglomerate-of-salmon-and-filler into “seafood puttanesca.”  One nice surprise was getting to make spanakopita from scratch.  My contribution included squeezing water from thawed frozen spinach, but my team thrilled to the chef-ly glory of brushing real butter onto phyllo dough, mixing and seasoning the filling to their own standard, and selling out halfway through lunch.  We listened to Greek mandolin folk music and remembered for a few hours how pleasant it is to make good food for people you like.

P.S.—Thanksgiving is happening in like 36 hours and almost no prep has been done.  More on this next time.

TGI Fry-Day

Before we begin, a brief note: I try not to mention names as people may not want to be written about, but I have to tell you that my sous chef is Willie Nelson.  He’s a great guitar player and singer, but he claims not to know many of his own songs.  Now then…

I closed out this workweek manning the deep fryers for Captain Dan’s Infamous Seafood Platter—a lunch featuring breaded “buffalo-style” shrimp (fresh from Lake Erie?), scallops, clam strips, oysters, and jojo wedges (those orangey seasoned steak fries).  At the beginning of the shift it was unclear what exactly made this homage to Long John Silver’s infamous…but it happened as I was cleaning out the sludgy burnt bits from the FryMaster.  Sometimes boys are such boys.  One cook bet another $5 to eat a spoonful of said oily nastiness.  Despite how disgusting it looked/was, I can believe that it wouldn’t taste horrible.  Actually, it probably tasted just like all the deep fried stuff.  Unfortunately, we forgot that it was still about 400 degrees, and my friend burnt his tongue pretty bad.  On the plus side, the other guy decided it was only fair to pony up $20.

In other cooking adventures, I was given free rein to invent some soup.  Leftover rice and a desire for something different led me to Thai roasted red pepper red curry rice soup, a mouthful of a name for a simple tasty belly warmer.  The next day, I wanted to recreate mom’s crowd pleaser ham-corn-potato chowder, but I’m limited to making vegetarian soups.  In order to make up for the lost flavor and heartiness of the ham, I roasted a ton of garlic and margarine (because the precious, rare butter is reserved for Thanksgiving), and mixed in lots of extra milk powder (mmmm, dehy milk, keeping our hardworking scientists and forklift drivers strong).

And in grammar news, we were thrilled to pull cases of hushpuppies from the freezer and find that they were “ovenable,” and recommended for serving as “grabitizers.”  It’s kind of like, “Well, you should probably deep fry these, but…yeah, why not, they’re ovenable.  Let’s put them out after the champagne toast, but before the first course.  An amuse bouche, if you will, or, let’s say, grabitizer.”

Here's a picture some guy took of a penguin near here:

There Is an Unlimited Supply of Gumbo File Powder at McMurdo

Unexpected Items I’ve Come Across In This Kitchen:

- three different brands of tamarind paste

- pizza-flavored croutons (*homemade*)

- vegetarian taco filling with surprise potato filler

- Leanies,™ a soy-based weenie substitute

- aphid-infested celery

- 240^th Navy (Marines? some kind of uniform type people) birthday cake

- frozen, boxed, every item pre-made sushi kit (*this was a special treat for our own company party which I unfortunately did not attend*)

- unlimited supply of mint chips

Unexpected Items I’ve Come Across In Antarctica:

- crazy/silly/robot facial expression stickers

- a main pipeline inexplicably labeled “PANCAKE” (see photo)

- stylish like-new pillow cases

- a set of smooth, dark stones perfect for replacing ice cubes

- 3-in-1 foot soaker/massager/scrubber that no longer heats water

- programmable embroidery machine

Drug, Booze, and Vinegar Cocktails

I spent much of the previous week shivering in double sweatpants and sweatshirts, broken by brief periods of sweating, visiting medical, and shambling past my hard-working colleagues to procure yogurt and mashed potatoes.  At least everyone could see I was one-quarter dead and didn’t begrudge me all that sweet, sweet time languishing in clammy pajamas.  And then science came to the rescue.  It’s amazing what a course of antibiotics will do.

The observation tube is back this year, and I delighted in tiny fish, krill, and mini-jellyfish, along with the gorgeous cut-crystal underside of the ice shelf.  My friend was lucky enough to be in there when nearby divers were working, so you can see what it looks like from the outside.

Yet more news in science, I made it through an entire lecture about sea spiders, which are like giant (2-8”) daddy longlegs but with almost no body.  Some issues under study are the relation between ocean oxygen content, polar gigantism, and the sea spider’s utilization of oxygen.  They speculate that the relative isolation of the Antarctic ocean, its cold temperature, its relatively calm tidal action, and its high oxygenation all contribute to the ease with which animals stay flush with oxygen.  Sea spiders spend their time walking around poking and sucking juices out of sponges, jellyfish, and other gooey things that end up on the ocean floor. 

The most interesting thing I made in the kitchen lately was a vinegar-based Carolina barbeque sauce.  At first it struck me as pretty disgusting: vinegar, more vinegar, some vinegar-based hot sauce.  Because I couldn’t handle that, I included ketchup, honey mustard, molasses, and dfjsdkjfnbmb (secret ingredient).  It was terrible to try to gauge on its own, but on pulled pork it was surprisingly good.  Not as good as sugary red KC Masterpiece, but decent if you insist on having Carolina-type barbecue.

Furious Cucumber

I decided to be the change I wanted to see; I organized a party.  Inspired by my predecessor egg line instructor from last year, I knew the best way to bridge the galley gulf, the perilous gap between cooks and stewards, to unite those of us who mop: after-work team-building beverages.  And like that somewhat wise man last year, I knew there was one perfect place for this event—the Hotel California lounge.  HoCal is rather rusticated at this point, but it was one of the first for-real dorm buildings on station.  It’s on the opposite side of town from all the other dorms, and has, for the most part, a transient population, housed primarily in two large bunk rooms, or man-camps.  Unlike one of the bars or my own lounge, there is about 0% chance of running into one of my bosses.  When I arrived to commandeer the lounge, two nice middle-aged guys were watching “Frozen,” and responded enthusiastically to my interruption.

It’s pretty easy to lure people with the promise of free alcohol, but I bumped up the enticement quotient by advertising a “signature cocktail.”  This consisted of me soaking cucumber slices in a fifth of gin, then adding some lime juice, tonic, ice, and, for culinary flair, parsley.  A refreshing summer sipper that paired well with a sunny evening on the back porch deck.  I came up with alternative nametags for everyone—I had time to kill, I don’t know most people’s actual names, and I hoped to spark spirit-animal-related conversation.  Some that I remember now are:

Wet Squirrel

Bedazzled Whale

Confused Panda

Sagacious Eel

The Jolly Snail

Meeeeeeeooow

So that was fun.  Unfortunately, that night my sore throat crossed over into awful-cold territory, and I won’t get to partake in tonight’s Halloween shenanigans. 

In other news this week, I got quite close to three seals sleeping heavily.  Close enough to watch their nostrils open and close to breathe, and hear adorable motorboat-like snores every so often.  Pupping season is upon us, and I’m going to imagine some of the flipper-waving and stomach-scooting action presages baby seal-slugs to come.

Here's an ethereal picture someone else took last year of a seal underwater:

It Was the Best of Times, It Was the Blurst of Times...

What's the best thing ever when you're tired?  Sleep.  What's the best thing ever when you wake up in the morning and don't have to go to work?  Breakfast-in-bedroom.  A full spread of avocados, apples, cheese, bread, yogurt, coffee, and a 'lil Bailey's is how I plan to start every "Saturday."

Once I get myself out of bed, next comes looking over my week's brief notes.  Here are some direct transcriptions:

- chx. parm. + pasta = food

- falafel from scratch (3 cases parsley)

- decade dance party - rad makeup - feeling human

Firstly, let me introduce you to one of this year's brilliant but logistically annoying concepts: 24-hour food.  There is already 24-hour pizza, deli bar, cereal, waffles, wrapped leftovers, and prepackaged food; but pretend none of those exist.  Cue the trumpets, we've got TWENTY-FOUR HOUR FOOD!  Originally, this was described as a short-order grill, pasta bar, rice, and more.  For my shift's part, we are meant to prepare and serve pasta, sauce, and a pasta-type casserole.  This is meant to be delicious, original, and change every day; this is meant to utilize leftovers; this is meant not to utilize leftovers; this is meant to be vegetarian; this is meant to be semi-vegetarian; this is meant to be sauces from scratch while using leftovers while being half vegetarian while being fresh and hot while being easy and not adding time to prep while being easy while being carefully made in small batches...get the idea?  It's really quite simple and we just sort out the details, as management expects.  Long story short, I hacked up some previously-baked pre-made breaded chicken parmesan patties with congealed cheese, added pasta, and heated it up.  Half got eaten, so at least some garbage was saved from the...garbage.

Contrastingly, I was rewarded with making some quite tasty falafel from scratch two days later.  Chickpeas were soaked, spices were toasted, and most significantly, a couple cubic yards (3 cases; 15 pounds?) of parsley were minced (no, no, not by hand, in the food processor).  I listened to J.T. croon, I ice-cream scooped an estimated 1,000 balls, and I deep-fried them.   

Saturday night was the Decade Dance Party at Gallagher's, the larger/louder of the bars.  Luckily, I had thoroughly perused the selections at the Skua (like a Goodwill, but free) and found a peach prom dress as well as a short-tight-snakeskin-print dress.  I also nabbed some wickedly pointy black heels, but come party time decided to protect my toes with red Mario Batali clogs.  My friend down the hall provided makeup, which I asked be applied to look "clown-like," and we decided the decade that most applied to my outfit would be '90s, so I had a high ponytail and those strings of bangs on either side like Alicia Silverstone.  There was a pretty good turnout, and we bounced around to disco and pop.  My makeup applicator friend wore my favorite outfit of the evening: also '90s, but the previous century.  Something possessed her to bring to this continent a for-real bonnet, and she paired it with a long patterned skirt and cardigan for that classic pioneer-ette look.

Here is a picture of gloaming.

Smorons; and, On Onions

Perhaps those of you who participate(d) in seasonal/annual activities will understand this: the sophomore experience.  You return for a second season of marching band/water polo/Lepidoptera conference convening, and there’s a mix of comfort, because you’ve been there before and know what to expect, and a tinge of disappointment, because the iconic characters that shaped your first impressions might not be there, because some of the newness and discovery inevitably can’t happen twice, and any changes seem a slap in the face to the sacred original.  (Did you make it through that long sentence?  Great.)  Hopefully, this feeling is tempered by the benefits of not being a complete nube—already having friends, knowing roughly what to expect from said activity, a modicum of confidence in your abilities.

Returning for a summer season on the Ice has been all of this, plus extra (um, sorry, hold on, I promise it gets better) disappointment.  Suffice to say lots of looking forward to something while playing a nostalgic loop in your head means reality will land on your lap with a bit of a thud.  Also suffice to say (as I’m not supposed to reflect negatively on the program), there are lots of changes in the kitchen and we are working hard (i.e.: struggling furiously) to accommodate the new sky-high expectations. 

Most earth-shatteringly so far: I only get to be on egg line one day a week.

Enough gloom.  All the cooks in the kitchen are cool and we get along and support each other, so there’s a jolly togetherness.  And when the boss “didn’t realize” my first day was supposed to be my weekly day off, and encouraged me to stay since I was already there and in my uniform, at least the same thing happened to two other people so we could all bust ass seven days in a row together. 

The most entertaining thing to me in the kitchen so far has been the return of smelling like I work at McDonald’s.  It doesn’t matter what I’m making.  Whether I just chop fresh peppers or stand over the grill, I will reek of greezy onions before the day is over.  I decided to start taking note of what time of the day I was saturated with allium scent, and reached a record yesterday at minute 8 into the day when I incautiously dumped onion powder into a container for barbeque sauce and it foomped up in a dust cloud.  The corner of my room where I put my laundry bag radiates greezy onion like rapidly increasing atomic fission, increasing exponentially as the week goes on.

Also this week in onion fun, our cases of scallions must have frozen, are consequently a bit yellow and wilted, and…disturbingly snot-filled.  I have come across this in rare instances before, but it is still quite alarming to pull off the unwanted outer layer and, instead of a crisp snap, release a resigned little gush of clear scallion phlegm.  

And I will leave you with this sexy potato sack from the veggie cooler.

En Route

Oh boy, I guess this is happening.  The trip as far as LA is ok; not awash in tears and -- complacent?  What's between content and resigned?  No, that's too dour.  Let's make up a word, like...consigned -- which, yes, is a word, but we're going to imagine it means contentment as a result of acceptance of something difficult.

Well now!  Out of the recesses of psyche and into the sunshine. :)  wen I get off the next plane it will be springtime.  Remember that bright-green young grass, and purple and red buds, flowers to challenge the color spectrum?  And lambs all over the place, fuzzy and kittenish.  Ok, sit with those images before more lame metaphors spill out.

Get Ready to Get Ready

The process of packing has always been extremely straightforward for me, one of the few things my brain accomplishes to my satisfaction with almost no conscious effort.  Unfortunately, that makes for boring conversation when people ask with wonder, "How in the world do you pack for five months away?" and I honestly respond, "Put some clothes and books in a bag."  I actually attach a silly amount of sentiment to certain shirts, scarves, and homey objects; embracing this fact and accepting that the comfort of taking a favorite article means I will appear more or less in uniform in all my pictures over a ten-year period helps limit the overall amount of stuff.  And my parents trained me to only ever take carry-on luggage, so even one medium bag besides my backpack leaves room for, to my mind, an embarrassing overabundance of possessions.  It also helps that I'm perfectly happy with one pair of shoes.  (*Caveat: For this trip, I also have a pair of work shoes.)

Of slight issue is my penchant for reading.  I could probably watch a movie or two on the flight, but that takes care of four of the 36 => infinity hours it will take me to get to the Ice.  I love actual print on paper, which gets weighty, and I usually buy books to keep and reread, so they're not likely to get ditched after consumption.  This time I'll compromise somewhat, with two books and a disposable Sunday Times.

Speaking of flying, this year I was one of a "lucky few" ticketed directly from LA to Auckland.  This would be more exciting if I went from New York to LA, as you think would be possible with the give-or-take 8,000 daily flights between those cities; but no, I'll get to jaunt over to San Francisco to tempt the God of Airport Delays just for fun.  The rundown is: New York to San Francisco; San Francisco to LA; LA to Auckland; Auckland to Christchurch.  Technically, it's a two-day journey, since you cross the International Date Line, a.k.a. time travel.  Let's assume everything goes smoothly and I sleep on every plane to emerge bright-eyed in New Zealand for a few days before going to the cold place (the last leg to Antarctica is about five hours on a military plane with an enormous sack lunch -- like two of everything).

Mentally, to get ready, I'm focusing on reasons I enjoyed it so much last year.  Interesting people, beautiful landscape, oddly gratifying work, and just a new slice of life...all good things to shuffle with doubts and worries.  Monday morning departure looms like fog: though it's familiar ground, I step carefully.

...Continuing...

Welcome to the horrible layout of Blogger, where random leading, uncontrolled text wrapping, and school-assignment font subconsciously warp the mind's processing of content.  Excuse me, former editor/typesetter feeling grumbly here.

So!  Back to the Ice.  I have rather complicated feelings about returning: it's a place I really like with people and work I like, and it fulfills my desire to travel and experience different ways of living; however, I'm also embarking on a stage of life where Matt and I shift from spouses to friends.  Here's a naked plea for lots of email and mail, to keep in touch with the world that still has night and stars.  :)

Regular postage works because it's technically a US address:

Claire Veligdan
McMurdo Station, ASC
PSC 769 Box 700
APO AP 96599-1035

Here's hoping for a good season, and a trip down that doesn't include lying on a cot at LAX in the wee smalls.  Wherever you are, enjoy the lovely autumn.