28 November 2009 Thanksgiving at the South Pole

Going back in time a little bit... picture yourself in a place where the horizon is as flat as the sea, except brilliant white and frozen... and yet inside, it's toasty warm and the holidays are upon us.  We celebrated Thanksgiving down here on Saturday instead of Thursday; this makes it easier for all the various shifts of workers to get together.

Because there are 250 people here, and we wouldn't all fit in the galley at once, we had to sign up for dinner shifts early in the week - I signed up for the earliest one (the only one still available) so dinner was at 4 pm.  We were also encouraged to sign up to volunteer as kitchen help for meal preparation.  I of course signed up for pie making duty!  

Friday night, the night before Thanksgiving, about 30 of us met in the galley, and the kitchen staff had all the recipes and ingredients out to prepare pies for 250.  I have never seen such a big can of pumpkin!  or such a huge jar of ginger!  but we wrangled all the ingredients together, poured the pumpkin mix into the pie shells, and handed them off to the real kitchen staff to bake.  Meanwhile, other groups prepared pecan pies and stuffing for the dinner.  I believe we made 20 pumpkin pies, and a similar number of pecan.

As a final project, we wrapped some brie in puff pastry and decorated it with cutouts of South Pole things - I made a pretty good Antarctica cutout, others made bunny boots, parkas, and symbolic representations of the various research (for IceCube, someone made a pretty good 3-d cube!).  These would be baked as part of the pre-dinner hors-d'oeuvres time.

Finally Saturday rolled around.  I didn't bother eating brunch, knowing I would eat far too much at dinner.  And of course, I was right!  at 3:30, a bunch of stood around the hors-d'oeuvre tables afraid to be the one to cut into the brie or the shrimp platter.  Many people were dressed up for the occasion.  Some of the musicians on station put together a set of live music ranging from loungy and mellow to upbeat and rockin'.  We ate fancy foods, drank some sangria, and visited with people we hadn't met yet.  Finally, we were called into the galley for dinner.

The galley staff did an outstanding job decorating for the holiday.  White strings of lights festooned the ceiling, and on the flat-screen monitors (which usually display temperature info, satellite times, flight info, etc) they played the classic fireplace scene to add some warmth.

Everyone found a table with friends and strangers, and as each table waited to be called up to the buffet, wine stewards went around offering fine New Zealand vintages to go with dinner.  The buffet was stacked with turkey cooked several ways, massive mounds of smashed red potatoes and stuffing, cranberry sauce, sweet potatoes, green beans, and everything else you could want.  They even went out of their way to make vegetarian stuffing and gravy for those non-carnivores who hide amongst us.

Then of course came the pies.  "Pumpkin or pecan?" was the question...  "Yes please" was the answer!  both pies were delicious of course, presented with a dollop of freshly whipped cream that they brought in for the special occasion.  There was a third option for pie, a chocolate chiffon pie, but I decided that two pies was enough for me...

After we ate, we were sort of rushed out to make space for the next dinner shift, complete with a new buffet of turkeys, fixin's, and pies.

Those of us who were done went off to our various corners of the station, hanging out until late hours trying to digest the lump of delicious carbohydrates that filled our stomachs.  It definitely helped people enjoy the day even though we are all thousands of miles away from our usual friends and families.  So, belated happy thanksgiving to everyone, hope you enjoyed yours as much as I enjoyed mine.