Our Food
Just like the varied and interesting members of G-063, our food has traveled a long, long way to get here to Lake Joyce. It either flew here on the C-17 as well, or was transported on the once yearly ship that comes to McMurdo Station. From there, it would have sat frozen until delivered by helicopter to Lake Joyce. Considering how far it has come, it’s pretty good... and like us, sometimes a little strange.
Justin cutting a box of eggs for us.
We have breakfasts of oatmeal or muesli with powdered milk and tea. Lunch is whatever we can scrounge – bars, quesadillas, frozen burritos (thawed out, to be sure) or leftovers. Our "refrigerator" is a box on the floor of the endurance tent. For dinner we have things like frozen chicken breasts, shrimp and veggies, and we've been trying to eat that first before direct sun warms our storage containers enough to prevent them from staying frozen. We sometimes have breakfast for dinner, with eggs too – they come frozen, raw and pre-scrambled in cardboard milk containers. We also have lots of packaged foods like pastas (mac n' cheese!), rice, canned foods like beans. We have lots of snacks like fig newtons, oreos, chocolate bars, and my favorite – cheezits.
Our food resupply list, written on the back of a couscous box.
Nearly all of the food is well past its sell-by date. In most cases, it doesn't matter that much because it’s been frozen since its arrival on the continent. However, the tortilla chips definitely smell weird, and the mojo bars can really only be bitten with molars. And some foods like cheese and tortillas are super crumbly after being frozen.
No one is eating the Slim Jims yet.
We miss baked goods and fresh foods the most. We only have a stovetop, but we've received some items like cornbread and brownie mix that we try to cook on the stovetop and turn out consistently weird (scrambled brownies?). A couple of days ago, we had our seventh and final team member, Anne Jungblut join us. Newly arrived from McMurdo, Anne is so clean she can still take her hat off. Fortunately, she is a kind and thoughtful person; she knows we've been out here on our own for four weeks now and she brought us treats! Six apples and three oranges! She also brought a selection of freshly made cookies and two loaves of fresh bread. Surprisingly, the bread actually lasted for 18 hours before being consumed.
We definitely need to overlook some basic sanitation principles too. We each have our own bowl and a titanium spork for eating and we each are responsible for cleaning those items. Sometimes that means a full soap and water affair, but licking things "clean" is totally acceptable and regularly practiced. We have to be mindful of how much wastewater we generate because it must all be flown out of here with us.
We find ourselves often eating things here that we would never eat in real life. (Says Sasha; "Wheat thins and butter are DELICIOUS!”). However, we spend most of our time working hard out in the cold all day, and our hunger makes our meals taste pretty good.
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