May 10: In the kitchen
Today, in addition to the scientific work, Popi and Bluee made dinner for the team: pizza, pasta, and a delicious berry crumble.
All the food we have is frozen. Taylor, our cook, has prepared everything in advance, and froze each meal in a bag. We just have to re-heat it on the propane stove that we brought with us. We like to use a propane stove so that getting warm and cooking food is entirely independent of the generator we use, just in case there is a power outage. It’s rare than a propane stove would break down.
One of the big jobs in the kitchen is to make water. Here, we don’t have running water. We just have a large pot that we fill up with snow, and the snow melts slowly. Over the course of a days, we need about 4-5 pots full, and for each pot, about 10 buckets of snow. It takes a while!
No shower either. To wash hands or dishes, we put a bit of water in a tub, warm, if possible. When the water is dirty, we dump it in a hole in the snow.
It’s a bit funny, to be surrounded by snow and not to have much water, but it’s a reminder that liquid freshwater is a precious thing!
