Better than pemmican

I haven’t bought any food for 9 months. Well, I used to buy peanut M&Ms at Polemart but we ran out of those around July. All of our meals are provided for us and while we may not have any freshly picked, caught or slaughtered food here but we do have enough frozen food to last us a couple of years. Most of it’s stored under the Dome, some on shelves like at Costco, some still on the same pallets that they came in on. All of it’s frozen solid. We also have food stored out on the berms and some of that stuff is pretty old. Earlier this winter (or was it last winter? I honestly can't remember) we ate some haddock that was received here on station 14 years ago. It was a bit chewy but still edible…kind of. The galley and materials folks worked on getting rid of all of the food that was 10 years and older so now we’re eating the “newer” food, like stuff that’s only 5 years old.

Here’s a shot of the inside of the Dome where we store some of the food and supplies where the beloved old galley used to be. I took this from the second floor of the old Comms building, which was a casualty of the demolition crew this winter and is no longer there either.

Getting the food up from the Dome is a chore and I’ve been helping out with the food pull every other week. We each have a shopping list that we take around the Dome, find the cases of chicken or baby peas or 50 pound bag of powdered milk, put it in a sled and haul it over to a big triwall box. Lately I always seem to get the sheet with 60 pound boxes of beef, but then again it’s amazing how heavy a case of pizza sauce is too. It all gets boxed up and a loader forks it over to the new station. Then the galley and materials folks either laboriously bring it up on the hoist (when it’s working) to the galley on the second floor, or they call for help and have a human chain hand up each box up the stairs outside and inside. It’s much faster the second way.

So Dan, one of the cooks, just sent out this email with the stats on what we 64 winterovers have consumed since Feb 21:

5428 pounds of beef
22720 fresh eggs
1527 pounds of fries
3948 pounds of pork
2811 pounds of poultry
2457 pounds of seafood
82 case of cold cereal
1590 pounds of cheese
1170 pounds of butter
2638 pounds of canned and frozen fruit
24300 slices of pre-made bread
418 lbs of meatless protein (tofu, tempeh, TVP…)
39 gallons of ketchup
11520 16 oz cups worth of orange juice
8450 16 oz cups worth of milk
432 gallons of soft serve ice cream

That’s a lot of food. Fortunately I’ve lost weight instead of gaining it down here, which is easy to do. And when I get out of here, one of the first things I'm doing is looking for a nice ripe banana...