The few times I've baked there, it's been a pretty good experience. There's a full height proving cabinet, yeast works really well at altitude, the ovens have steam injectors, there are good mixers, a commercial fryer. In many ways much easier than baking at home, but probably not a patch on a good bakery.
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.
> It's also hard to brew coffee if you tend to use off-the-boil. The best you'll get is about 93 C.
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.
Do they not do soaked beans? Leave them in water for 2 days and they shouldn't need a full boil I wouldn't think? Bonus: chickpea water as an egg substitute in recipes (powdered egg is nasty!). Re: coffee, mixing concentrated cold brew with hot water makes a pretty smooth cup
> Do they not do soaked beans? Leave them in water for 2 days and they shouldn't need a full boil I wouldn't think?
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.
At McMurdo this season the espresso machine at the coffee house broke. Fortunately we had two espresso machines out at LDB, and plenty of C1 and C4 beans
I depends the beans and their freshness. If soaked and not 2yo+, it’s less than 1 hour for most of them. 30 min is enough for azuki and chickpeas if soaked 48h.
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.
I cook more with feeling than recipe and I as I hike for multi days I try to vary the meals to avoid getting bored. My typical bag includes multiples zip bag with ingredients and I pick a few to make a 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.
Even without a pressure cooker, you can cook beans faster in a microwave oven.
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.
Article says room and board, plus cost of transportation, are covered. So that $13/hr goes quite a bit further than it would if a chunk of it was going towards paying for food and rent. (And if you were paying for the cost of the plane flight, then nobody would take the job). Can't calculate the equivalent compensation without knowing where the author lives normally, but it might (VERY rough guess) be the equivalent of $20 to $25 per hour.
Can probably ignore rent savings. In the article the author says she missed her husband, kids, and dog so she still had some of the same costs going on back home.
And Wikipedia says she earned a Ph.D. in 2004 and lives in NYC [1]
Are you kidding? It's Antarctica. Rich people will pay a small fortune just to get a glimpse of the place! For the opportunity to spend a season living there, I'd gladly accept a low-paying job. I'd probably do it for free.
(Alas, I doubt my life will ever work out in such a way that I'll have that opportunity.)
I knew some people who did it in the 90s and 2000s. At least then it was comparable to other "extreme" cooking jobs like tugboats, oil rigs, mining camps. Reputation was that pay was generally less than those but the setting more interesting and you were less likely to get raped.
If you've never seen it I highly recommend "A Place Further than the Universe".
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 enjoyed Werner Herzog's "Encounters at the End of the World" at many levels, not the least of which was how different it was from "Aguirre, the Wrath of God".
Well he didn't have psychopathic Kinski to mess with everything and everybody, throwing childish tantrums over trivial things, did he. I mean the locals during filming offered to Herzog to murder him as a favor, seeing him as an evil spirit... you can't go much further than that.
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.
>At roughly nine thousand three hundred feet above sea level (~2800M)
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.
It should be noted that because of the effect of the poles on the atmosphere (the atmosphere is intrinsically thinner near the poles), the surface pressure is even lower, so that it feels like about 11k feet in altitude rather than 9k feet in altitude.
Bodies acclimate. You'll go up in altitude one day and get quite sick, then the next day or another day you'll be fine. Spend a week there and you'll feel better. Drink water, stay hydrated, and it will go more smoothly. So unless somebody found something specifically atypical about your body, don't reject all mountains in the world because of one bad day 40 years ago.
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.
mitchbob – yesterday
joshvm – 23 hours ago
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.
porker – 13 hours ago
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.
0xbadcafebee – 21 hours ago
joshvm – 19 hours ago
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.
cozzyd – 18 hours ago
ufo – 20 hours ago
aziaziazi – 20 hours ago
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.
is_true – 19 hours ago
aziaziazi – 13 hours ago
- 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.
adrian_b – 6 hours ago
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.
scuff3d – 16 hours ago
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...
xboxnolifes – 13 hours ago
rmunn – 14 hours ago
Brybry – 11 hours ago
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.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cree_LeFavour
marssaxman – 5 hours ago
(Alas, I doubt my life will ever work out in such a way that I'll have that opportunity.)
giraffe_lady – 5 hours ago
socalgal2 – 23 hours ago
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.
egl2020 – 16 hours ago
kakacik – 12 hours ago
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.
wumms – 21 hours ago
unselect5917 – 17 hours ago
jmclnx – yesterday
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.
jcranmer – 20 hours ago
(See, e.g. https://brr.fyi/posts/pressure-altitude.)
cozzyd – 18 hours ago
codingdave – 9 hours ago
lproven – 9 hours ago
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.