South Pole Station

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Running Midrats gave Pearl a distinct advantage, though it was not without its drawbacks. On the plus side, there were fewer mouths to feed, so Pearl could spend more time on the food. The con was that the Midrats crew was made up of staunch Bonnie allies—grizzled old hands who’d formed an ironclad bond over this midnight meal. It took a few weeks before their irritation over the change in personnel faded.

Pearl hewed close to the set Midrats menu at first—irregularities raised eyebrows at Pole. Routine was vitally important to the operation of the station and to the minds of the people working there, and curveballs were not appreciated. So Pearl started by cooking exactly what was on the menu. Sloppy Joes on a Bun (Tempeh Joes on a Bun). Honey Dipt Chix with Mashed Potatoes, Gravy (Pilaf). Texas Tamale Pie (Veg. Tamale Pie). Turkey Club Sandwich w/Pasta Salad (Szechuan Rollups w/Tempeh).

Once the Midrats meal had been served, Pearl would hunch over her notebook, trying to meld flavors in her mind, to imagine what dishes might revive the long-dead taste buds of the veterans without creating resentment. She identified the foodstuffs that were lowest on the totem pole: dates, Melba toast, lentils, capers, tempeh.

November 4, 2003

Found out Bonnie has hated the plantains we get in bulk ever since she tried a Sweet Potato and Roasted Plantain gratin (Still Life p. 123) to bad reviews. She told me she tried to get the plantains off the shipment list but VIDS says they’re a cheap source of potassium and don’t get mushy as quickly as bananas do. Typically she sautés them in butter and brown sugar once a week and serves them as a breakfast side. I already have three potential dishes in mind, but since I’m charged with the daily soups, I’m going with a plantain sopa. Tucker has warned me about the “parochial tastes” of Polies, but I think he’s only talking about the repeaters. The fresher Beakers and support staff still have taste-memories of halfway decent food. Won’t take much to reawaken that.

When Bonnie had been running Midrats, she lumbered in a half hour before service, pulled the prepped ingredients from the fridge, and started cooking. Pearl rarely left the kitchen after dinner service now. She took her time with the meals, and the meals on the menu not only tasted better, they also looked better. The presentation was nothing out of the ordinary—fussiness would have resulted in ridicule. But it was just different enough to create a sense of beauty that was almost invisible.

She also started pickling vegetables. This activity was an acceptable use of the station’s vinegar stores because the supply of fresh produce would run out about a month after the station closed for the winter. Pearl pickled everything from carrots to the tiny gem-like chili peppers grown in the greenhouse. To be festive, she tied ribbons around the jars and displayed them near the condiment tray. One night, she canned an entire shipment of damaged peaches, and set one jar aside for Birdie. When she handed it to him, he was so happy, he kissed her. To Pearl’s surprise, it wasn’t horrible.

For the first meal swap, Pearl decided to start with the vegetarian meals, since they’d likely arouse less attention and because the vegetarians tended to have a more forgiving palate. The scheduled Lentil-Walnut Surprise (p. 147, MW) was bypassed in favor of a black-pepper-glazed tempeh, served with sherry-braised leeks, fried capers, and hoppin’ John. The sherry was cooking sherry a year past its expiration date and the hoppin’ John was made from a five-year-old bag of dried black-eyed peas that Pearl found in the pantry. Still, Pearl thought it stellar. No one at Midrats said a word.

A week before Thanksgiving, Pearl served her Plantain Sopa—a cream-based soup made from ripe plantains—and her pickled chili peppers. She paired it with a buckwheat flatbread. This time, three people came up for seconds, including a non-veggie maintenance specialist.

November 15, 2003

Bonnie came into the kitchen this morning furious. Someone told her about the plantain soup. I couldn’t ask if the review was good or bad because she was like the Tasmanian Devil. She said all menu changes had to be approved by VIDS, and went on and on about the importance of proper authorization. I spoke to Tucker about it this afternoon, and he hemmed and hawed for a while, but then said he’d make some calls. Tonight, right in the middle of dinner prep, he came in and told Bonnie that VIDS had authorized me to make any menu changes I wanted during Midrats. She walked out, leaving Kit and me to deal with the rest of dinner service.

Word quickly spread that Midrats meal was by far the best meal served at Pole. The ranks of midnight diners swelled, and the graveyard crew complained that they couldn’t get a table. For them it wasn’t about the food; it was about the company. For the new arrivals, it was the opposite. Pearl’s changes to the Midrats menu had now extended beyond the vegetarian option and into the main entrées. One night she took the leftover Cornish game hens from the previous year’s food stock and broiled individual birds with a glaze made from her own stash of homemade sour cherries. The desserts were beyond anything anyone had seen at Pole before: buttermilk panna cotta (in which Pearl could hide expiring milk—a perpetual problem), lemon chiboust, pumpkin tiramisu. Meringues and soufflés were out of the question due to the elevation, but Pearl could live without them, and the Polies didn’t know what they were missing.

Thanksgiving was turkey three ways—smoked, fried, and roasted—with Kit smoking seven birds outside, on the far side of the Crevasse of Death. “Fifty fucking below, ladies,” Kit reminded Bonnie and Pearl. “I think that’s enough selflessness for a day off.”

“Dream on, honey,” Bonnie replied, in a decent mood for the first time in weeks. But then Pearl felt a piece of her die as she watched Bonnie spoon jellied cranberries out of aluminum cans; the sound they made as they plopped, can-shaped, into the serving dishes was as gross as an overdubbed movie kiss.

Yet Bonnie surprised Pearl with other culinary efforts. From out of nowhere, she produced a jar of fermenting kombucha. She also delighted everyone with an enormous batch of real mashed potatoes—Bonnie had pulled some strings to get a crate of russets from McMurdo. For the holiday meal, Pearl had been relegated to pastry chef, and she did well: pumpkin and pecan pies, of course, but also a pear galette and 105 servings of pot de crème.

As Pearl looked out at the darkened galley, at the Polies stuffing their faces, at the paper turkeys and Pilgrims hanging from the ceiling and the twinkling fairy lights, she felt something strange. Not peace—the job was still unfinished—but a kind of serenity that she had not experienced in years. The feeling that, if she could make it hers, this kitchen could become a home.

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