10.24.2003
LIFE IN THE GALLEY
Welcome to my world
Key phrase: High Volume Output. All of our equipment and procedures are set up to meet the dining needs of 1,200 people three times a day (and a population of 200 for the midnight meal). Here I am stirring Paul Bunyon's tea.
Most of the food is cooked in these 6 oversized steam kettles. On the other side of the kitchen are a line of ovens and fryers. Not a single stove is used for cooking at this volume.
For breakfast you can have eggs to order from Sherrie, the egg lady. She's been coming down for 8 seasons. You can even get a Denver omlette right here in Antarctica. Ernest Shakleton never dreamed of having it so good. (If you don't know about Ernest Shakleton's early Antarctic explorations, check out the link at right).
Here's Lucy, monitoring "the line". We bring out full "hotel pans" full of hot food as needed and keep the area looking clean and as enticing as possible. Lucy, an Italian woman, has a Master's degree in arcaeology, and runs a high-altitude mountaineering hut in the Italian Alps at the border of France. Erik and I are thinking of visiting her and her husband Luke (who is a production cook) there in our travels.
My buns are starting to resemble these.
We do a pretty good job serving healthy food, given the dirth of fresh foods (they call them "freshies", and are as prized as cigarettes in prison. I served an apple at a party the other day, and got ooohhs and aaahhhs). Most all of the food we're eating arrived on the ship last February, and has been frozen since then (and who knows how long before that). It's stored in huge square cardboard boxes stacked two stories high in a warehouse across the street. On a tour, I saw one container marked "dead cow". We wondered if the other boxes contained live cows?
The bakery is world class, however -- baking fresh breads and pastries daily. Even the hot dog buns are made from scratch. Our head baker worked at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. (I've still never been there for high tea -- an activity high on my list of things to do when I get back to Boulder). The midnight baker, Jake, is famous for his irresistable cinnamon buns.
This is the dining room, bustling with lunchtime activity. Lunch is our busiest meal, and we have 18 DAs (dining attendants) on schedule tasked with serving, washing dishes and pots & pans, making sandwiches, working in the bakery, chopping vegetables, meal clean-up, laundry, sweeping and mopping floors, vacuuming, washing tables, filling salt & pepper & sugar & napkins, cleaning the galley bathrooms, and most importantly, MAKING COFFEE. Not the most glamorous job on the base. But not without recognition -- many times a day folks stop and thank us for our efforts.
My nemesis: the stack of pots and pans in the "pot room". I actually like this task, because I can put on my favorite music and go, go, go. No customers here.
David (in the background behind the pot room sanitizer and a stack of sheet pans coming out), one of my fellow co-workers from Detriot. He just graduated with a Master's in philosophy, and will pursue a career in photography once he leaves here. The best part of this job is the group of people I work with. Each person was hand picked not so much for their dish-washing skills, but as an interesting individual with obvious strength of character. Makes my job as "lord of the flies" easier.
This is Phil, on his last day of 14-months as a DA. He and Martha were two of my favorite winter-over friends. They had been there through the isolated months with no sunshine, and were quite overwhelmed when we arrived at WinFly excited and eager to be trained.
Our becoming uniforms consist of baggy black chef pants, bright blue polo shirt, dingy "white" apron, plastic apron (complete with duct tape), green gloves over white cotton liners, and some sort of all-over hair covering. David wears a hair net, but the rest of us (mostly women) wear handkerchiefs -- to top off the communist factory-worker look.
Three more DAs feeding "Bertha", the other dish machine. She licks our plates and silverware clean.
The first time I walked out into the dining hall on a break carrying my tray, looking out at the crowd of unfamiliar faces for a table to sit at, I felt transported back to elementary school. Wearing my DA uniform, denuded of my professional identity, I realized how much of my self-esteem I draw from my career. If I look at the bright side (and you know I usually do) I can see that this will be a good growth experience to let go of "CareerGirl" for a little bit, and get back to basics in many ways.
Welcome to my world
Key phrase: High Volume Output. All of our equipment and procedures are set up to meet the dining needs of 1,200 people three times a day (and a population of 200 for the midnight meal). Here I am stirring Paul Bunyon's tea.
Most of the food is cooked in these 6 oversized steam kettles. On the other side of the kitchen are a line of ovens and fryers. Not a single stove is used for cooking at this volume.
For breakfast you can have eggs to order from Sherrie, the egg lady. She's been coming down for 8 seasons. You can even get a Denver omlette right here in Antarctica. Ernest Shakleton never dreamed of having it so good. (If you don't know about Ernest Shakleton's early Antarctic explorations, check out the link at right).
Here's Lucy, monitoring "the line". We bring out full "hotel pans" full of hot food as needed and keep the area looking clean and as enticing as possible. Lucy, an Italian woman, has a Master's degree in arcaeology, and runs a high-altitude mountaineering hut in the Italian Alps at the border of France. Erik and I are thinking of visiting her and her husband Luke (who is a production cook) there in our travels.
My buns are starting to resemble these.
We do a pretty good job serving healthy food, given the dirth of fresh foods (they call them "freshies", and are as prized as cigarettes in prison. I served an apple at a party the other day, and got ooohhs and aaahhhs). Most all of the food we're eating arrived on the ship last February, and has been frozen since then (and who knows how long before that). It's stored in huge square cardboard boxes stacked two stories high in a warehouse across the street. On a tour, I saw one container marked "dead cow". We wondered if the other boxes contained live cows?
The bakery is world class, however -- baking fresh breads and pastries daily. Even the hot dog buns are made from scratch. Our head baker worked at the Brown Palace Hotel in Denver. (I've still never been there for high tea -- an activity high on my list of things to do when I get back to Boulder). The midnight baker, Jake, is famous for his irresistable cinnamon buns.
This is the dining room, bustling with lunchtime activity. Lunch is our busiest meal, and we have 18 DAs (dining attendants) on schedule tasked with serving, washing dishes and pots & pans, making sandwiches, working in the bakery, chopping vegetables, meal clean-up, laundry, sweeping and mopping floors, vacuuming, washing tables, filling salt & pepper & sugar & napkins, cleaning the galley bathrooms, and most importantly, MAKING COFFEE. Not the most glamorous job on the base. But not without recognition -- many times a day folks stop and thank us for our efforts.
My nemesis: the stack of pots and pans in the "pot room". I actually like this task, because I can put on my favorite music and go, go, go. No customers here.
David (in the background behind the pot room sanitizer and a stack of sheet pans coming out), one of my fellow co-workers from Detriot. He just graduated with a Master's in philosophy, and will pursue a career in photography once he leaves here. The best part of this job is the group of people I work with. Each person was hand picked not so much for their dish-washing skills, but as an interesting individual with obvious strength of character. Makes my job as "lord of the flies" easier.
This is Phil, on his last day of 14-months as a DA. He and Martha were two of my favorite winter-over friends. They had been there through the isolated months with no sunshine, and were quite overwhelmed when we arrived at WinFly excited and eager to be trained.
Our becoming uniforms consist of baggy black chef pants, bright blue polo shirt, dingy "white" apron, plastic apron (complete with duct tape), green gloves over white cotton liners, and some sort of all-over hair covering. David wears a hair net, but the rest of us (mostly women) wear handkerchiefs -- to top off the communist factory-worker look.
Three more DAs feeding "Bertha", the other dish machine. She licks our plates and silverware clean.
The first time I walked out into the dining hall on a break carrying my tray, looking out at the crowd of unfamiliar faces for a table to sit at, I felt transported back to elementary school. Wearing my DA uniform, denuded of my professional identity, I realized how much of my self-esteem I draw from my career. If I look at the bright side (and you know I usually do) I can see that this will be a good growth experience to let go of "CareerGirl" for a little bit, and get back to basics in many ways.
