Notes on Baking at the South Pole
newyorker.com
newyorker.com
We almost ran out of sugar in 2021 and Rothera sent us a bag of Tate and Lyle in break-glass-in-emerhency box on one of the early transit flights the following summer. That's still hanging in the galley. Cream also goes pretty quickly, and forget about eggs. But you only need "egg product" anyway.
The foods that tend to be avoided are pasta and beans, or really anything which has to be boiled. There's a massive pressure cooker but it's a pain to use and clean. It's also hard to brew coffee if you tend to use off-the-boil. The best you'll get is about 93 C. Espresso is fine as its pressurised anyway.
There’s other tricks: various beans can be found in the form of instant powder or flaskes (1 min watering - no cooking) semolina (5 min watering - no cooking) and pre steamed (no watering - 10/20 min cooking). I bring those to hike on the mountain and use gaz only to make them hot. Mixed with cereals semolina, spices, herbs and oil/nuts its the perfect submit meal.
- semolina of wheat, whole wheat, rye, lentils and chickpeas
- flakes-instant smashed potatoes / adzuki beans. Instant quinoa packed with prots but miss carbs.
- sesame seeds, sunflower seeds, pumpkin seeds
- dried seasoning algae, yeast, zaatar or thyme. Curry powder or other spice mix.
One of my favorite mix is 1/3 lentil semolina, 2/3 wheat semolina, sesame seeds and yeast. Mix together, add water and cover for a few minutes.
Edit: last year I used a food dehydrator to pack some sauces and cooked vegetables. Works great for the ones in think slices.
However, you still need more than a half of hour if you want the beans to be soft, e.g. 45 minutes (after having soaked the beans for a half of day).
I cook all my food in a microwave oven. Except for beans, I have never encountered any vegetable that would need more than 15 minutes. For lentils or chickpeas, around 12 minutes is normally sufficient.
We'd definitely have kidney beans in chili and some other dishes, but I got the impression it was a hassle otherwise.
> Re: coffee, mixing concentrated cold brew with hot water makes a pretty smooth cup
Friend and I ran a weekly pop-up espresso bar and did a lot of experimenting over the winter. The USAP "house" beans are quite dark, but at least they're roasted within a year or two because coffee is always available and we go through a lot of beans every season. Except the decaf. That stuff is decades old.
People often bring down a big bag from one of the roasters in Christchurch. We personally shipped down a lot of specialty coffee, mostly made V60 and aeropress. The outbuilding where our telescopes live also has a Chemex and an automatic.
That sounds ideal for off-the-boil coffee brewing? At sea level I (and all the speciality coffee shops round here) aim for 91C, and I'll drop that to 88-89C for medium roast and lower if it looks on the dark side. Brew methods: Aeropress and cafetiere.
Thinking about it, we also had some "fancy" packet ramen from Momofuku. Good example there - those noodles take forever to cook compared to the deep fried ones. You'd have to soak, nuke in the microwave and still wait ages.
Most of the coffee we took down were light roast and how well the beans survived shipping/storage, how well they were roasted mattered much more.
There are a bunch of cafetieres as well, but I don't like the silt even with some of the techniques designed to minimize it.
WTF? I figured the only way you'd get someone to go up there (who's not a researcher) would be to pay well. Crazy...
And Wikipedia says she earned a Ph.D. in 2004 and lives in NYC [1]
Probably safe to say she didn't go for the money.
(Alas, I doubt my life will ever work out in such a way that I'll have that opportunity.)
I heard Antarctica on average very high above sea level. So I would think just the thinness of the air would make baking rather hard compared to sea level.
Sadly I will not be able go there. 40 years ago, when I when was at around 6000 feet above sea level on a trip, I was getting dizzy when moving around :) Sea level is were I was born and were I will stay.
(See, e.g. https://brr.fyi/posts/pressure-altitude.)
Absolutely -- and at different rates.
I have had severe asthma since puberty. After a decade of suffering, good drugs arrived around the turn of the century, and I've been well controlled since and I've been pretty active.
But I am better at altitude. I have narrow obstructed tubes in my lungs. Thinner air flows through them more easily. The higher I am (on land, obviously) the more easily and efficiently I can breathe.
In the old days, asthma clinics were located up mountains for this reason.
I like spending time at altitude. Thinner air means more oxygen for me, which means I feel better and can be more active.
If I could live 3-4 km up all the time, without vast expense in somewhere tiny, I would.
It's an anime, serious (not a wacky comedy) about 4 high school students who manage to take a trip to Antartica by joining an expedition. One of the best things I've seen in a while. Only 13 episodes so under 4hrs total. Super inspiring and I learned several interesting facts about not just Antartica but what it takes to get there as well.
It's on Crunchyroll so if you aren't subscribed, sign up for 1 month for the price of 2 coffees. Watch, then cancel.
I also recommend ie Dark Glow of the Mountains about Messner and Kammerlander doing properly hardcore expedition on Gasherbrums traverse in Pakistan that was never done before. He interviews them before they depart and after coming back, surviving by series of mere chances in extreme environment, pushed to absolute limits of human bodies and minds. Since I do a bit of mountaineering I can truly appreciate characters and the insights that no hollywood fantasies can ever come close to. True documentaries.
A bit controversial sidenote - these are the efforts that I have huge respect for, not doing it for the money, not chasing sponsors with every move. Seeing some world championships or olympics I can't have much respect for those very rich sportsmen who are focusing more on chasing new sponsors than actual spirit of the game.