Antarctica, Austral Summer 2019 - 2020 (Part 7 - The Crud and Thanksgiving)
Antarctica is a continent of extremes. Extreme conditions. Extreme cold. Extreme isolation. Things tend to happen very quickly at McMurdo. The nature of seasonal employment means people’s days here are numbered even before they arrive on the ice so people tend to live hard and fast. Being confined to living together in close quarters causes relationships between people to form very quickly and it’s common to see people take “ice wives” or “ice husbands,” cramming years’ worth of relationship experience into a 4-6 month period.
This same proximity also causes the fast spread of other things like rumors, gossip, and, most recently, illness. “The Crud” as it’s known in McMurdo, is a seasonal, flu-like condition that makes the rounds at the Antarctic bases every year and can knock you on your ass for up to two weeks. Since we are the only place on station that people can eat, people working in the galley are kept on an especially tight leash when it comes to being sick and unfortunately this left us short handed on a few shifts over the week starting on November 20th.
During the summer season, Military C-17 cargo planes fly in fairly regularly bringing people, mail, cargo, and most importantly to the kitchen: “freshies.” Freshies are what we call fruit, vegetables, and greens that have never been frozen or canned. This season however, the C-17s have been experiencing a myriad of mechanical failures or accidents that have caused numerous delays and have kept the base from receiving the personnel and cargo that it has been expecting.
After a conex shipping container struck the side of the plane during the unloading process, flights down from New Zealand were halted for almost a week, stranding the nearly 5,000 pounds of freshies we were expecting from getting to us. With Thanksgiving right around the corner, we desperately needed this shipment in order to satisfy our plans for Thanksgiving dinner. Fortunately, on Saturday the 23rd, we finally got our much anticipated delivery.
All free hands in the galley were mobilized into the back loading dock to try to get everything into our produce fridge as much as quickly as possible to keep the (barely) freezing temperatures from damaging the produce.
The next few days in the kitchen were spent processing and breaking down all of the freshies in anticipation of Thanksgiving dinner. Thanksgiving is never celebrated on the real day at McMurdo, instead the holiday is observed on later that week on Saturday, giving the people on base a two day weekend.
In the middle of all the preparation for Thanksgiving, on Thursday the 28th I had my first event as the “Distinguished Visitors” (DV) chef and as such I had to prepare a meal for sixty people. As the DV chef I get access to a few more lucrative food items like duck breast and foie gras.
Since Wednesdays are typically my day off, I began preparing for the event on Tuesday by making mushroom risotto for arancinis and reducing balsamic vinegar for a gastrique. I was admittedly really excited to get back to doing as close to fine dining as I possibly could at the ends of the earth and making the food I really love to cook.
After my shift ended on Tuesday night, I hitched a ride with shuttles out to Williams field at 3:00 AM to get some shots of the LC-130 cargo planes parked out there. On the drive over, the snow started coming down pretty heavily which allowed me to take some very impressive looking photos.
Once Thursday rolled around, I was given the disappointing news that our distinguished visitors were going to be leaving early and therefore the event would be cancelled. I didn’t have a lot of time to be disappointed though as the focus of the kitchen was solely locked on Thanksgiving dinner in two days.
Since the only meal service we would be providing on Saturday was Thanksgiving dinner, we expected our “grab and go” box of premade sandwiches and leftovers to get completely raided. As such, it was my responsibility to ensure it was fully stocked to prepare for the incoming onslaught. On Friday, I spent 15 hours, staying until nearly 3:00 AM making pizzas, sandwiches, and other meals to load up the refrigerators for the community to enjoy.
The big day was finally here. Days of preparation had led to this moment. In order to feed close to 1,000 people we had 1,008 pounds of whole turkeys, 400 pounds of turkey breasts, 360 pounds of ham, 500 pounds of mashed potatoes, 35 gallons of gravy, and 195 pies.
