Not such a harsh continent

Nearly everyone's favorite saying about Antarctica is "It's a harsh continent". It probably started out as the most obvious statement to make about this frozen wasteland but now it's become the most popular reply to someone who whines about anything. So the store ran out of Coca Cola last week and you have to drink Pepsi? It's a harsh continent, now shut up.

We may have run out of Milk Duds and Butterfingers and now it looks like we may need to cut back on our orange juice consumption to make the supply last until the end of winter but we are by no means close to roughing it down here.

Here is our Galley all decked out for our Mid-Winter gala celebration last Friday.

Photos by Robert Schwarz

We brought out the table cloths, linen napkins and extra cups and decorated the tables with candles and confetti. People even showered and dressed up, certainly not an everyday occurance and I'm talking about the showering.

Our fine chefs Francie, Michael and Neil prepared a fabulous feast worthy of a 5 star restaurant in any metropolitan city in the world. It's amazing what they can do with frozen food at the bottom of the world.

We started out with a salad of Curly Cress and Mixed Asian Greens with a Sesame Hazelnut Vinaigrette topped with a Panko Crusted Goat Cheese Crouton. The veggies were grown in our greenhouse (aka Food Growth Chamber, the PC official name) and picked earlier that day.

Next was a delicious bowl of Crab Infused Borscht served with Lime Basil Cream.

In case you didn't want to have to choose between a meat, poultry or seafood entre, we were served all three. The Trio of Pleasures included Curry-basted Lobster with Wilted Greens, Mango Chutney and Brown Curry Butter, Asian Marinated Duck Medallions with Ginger Edaname Puree and Herb Crusted Beef Tenderloin with a Wild Mushroom Port Reduction and topped off with a Cranberry Wild Rice Salad.
Photo by Sven Lidstrom

The dessert was a Chocolate Souffle that towered above the plate with a pastry garnish, melted in your mouth and was the perfect finale to an exquisite culinary experience.

After the feast, we got most of the ladies together once again for another group photo. It's not often when we're all cleaned up at the same time and wearing something other than Carhartts or polypropylene.

And with that celebration, we kicked off the second half of winter and now head into what can be some of the more difficult months ahead. Really I can't say that this is a harsh continent at all when we are dining like this and having this much fun but if one more person complains about having to use toilet paper to blow their nose because we ran out facial tissues, you can guess what my response would be to them.