Saturday, February 26, 2011

In one of history´s great ironies...

... a ex-Soviet spy boat, piloted by an ex-Soviet attack submarine captain, drives old Europeans and Americans around Antarctica.

True story.  Our boat was built as a Polar ¨Research¨ (e.g. spy) vessel.  Our Captain patrolled the Atlantic for U.S. nuclear subs.

Then, the Soviet Union fell apart. 

Then, an entrepreneur figured out Antarctic tourism was booming while Russia´s military was desperate for money.  Hello, Soviet crew, Soviet boat, and Western social-security money.




El Capitan on the bridge. 

The Captain ¨like very much¨the charts.

50% Tchaikovsky, 50% Russian Techno for the bridge.

The 2nd mate.





If you love ice, cold and penguins...

...Antarctica is your continent.


Other trips on smaller sailboats.  You can see the scale of the glaciers here - most had 80 - 200 feet of ice hanging into the water.
Millions of penguins - we must have seen a couple of thousand in just in a week.  Late February is getting close to the end of the breeding season, and these chicks will soon take to the sea.


Penguins, snow and ice and the Polar Pioneer, our home for 11 days.  The shack is a refuge maintained by the Argentinians in case of an emergency.

Austere and beautiful.

None of the wildlife seems to mind humans too much... this is a fur seal looking annoyed.

Almost 2 months since leaving a civilized life in Boston.

Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Antarctica

Boat leaves this evening.  Back the 26th.

50 passengers - average age, 50.  Half will be diving.  The rest of us will be hanging with the Nat Geo photographer.

Not going to be much contact with the outside world down there. 

Just me, the Russian crew, a bunch of nonegenarion dry suit divers and the local pinguinos




Food - greatest hits

These were epic meals.

Pizza - Yes, its possible in the wilderness.  Make a dough baby with flour, salt, water and yeast.  Let it sit for 2 hours.  Then fry-bake it with your choice of tomato sauce, salami, cheese, cream cheese, oregano and red pepper.


Chilean Brown Energy Bar - When you can't make coffee every 2 hours... turn your coffee into a chocolate energy bar.  Mix baking chocolate, instant coffee, raisins, butter, milk powder and sugar.  

Mama´s Jambalaya - make some tomato soup, and then add rice, salami, salt, pepper, red pepper, oregano and butter.

Po´Man´s Bread Pudding - boil water and add cocoa powder, sugar, cinnamon, raisins and butter.  Make cream of wheat in the resulting mixture.  Let cool and eat cold as trail food.

Breakfast Bread - make a dough baby with flour, water, yeast, oatmeal, raisins, walnut, sugar and cinnamon and fry-bake on butter.

Three Cheese Couscous - heat up butter and toast couscous for 10 minutes.  Add water until couscous is ready.  Add block cheese, cream cheese, parmesan cheese, salt and pepper to taste.  Add dried fruit like figs or dried pears for a savory version. 

Expedition Life: Food

Lots of ingredients in the backcountry and its choose your own adventure.

The equipment: a stove, a frying pan, and a metal bowl.

The food: varies, but mostly grains, cheese, sugar and a few different spices.

It can be delicious or horrifying.

Delicious
Bowtie pasta with sauteed salami, sundried tomatos, mushrooms and a garlic butter sauce

1 bag of pasta
3-4 cloves of garlic, finely chopped
100g salami, chopped
Red pepper
Salt
Black pepper
200g block cheese of your choice
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons milk powder
Handful of sundried tomatos 
Handful of dried mushrooms

Heat up frying pan.  Melt butter.  Add garlic and salami.  Saute until garlic golden brown.  Add water and milk powder until sauce a thick consistency.  Take off of heat and set aside.

In seperate  bowl, add water, pinch of salt and pepper, mushrooms and sundried tomatos.  Leave on high heat until it boils.  Add pasta and cook for 12 minutes.  Strain, saving the pasta water as a hot broth to drink (if youd like).  Add cheese, butter sauce, and red pepper to taste and mix until cheese is melty and delicious.  Enjoy.

Less Delicious
Vegetable rice noodle soup with textured vegetable protein. (Also known as the ¨TVP special.¨)

1 bag veggie soup mix
1 bag nice noodles
200g TVP
Vegetable oil
Salt
Pepper
Garlic

Mix TVP and water until TVP soaks up water. It should be firm but not mushy.

Heat oil, add garlic.  Saute TVP for 15 minutes.  Remove from heat.


Boil water in seperate bowl, add veggie soup mix.  Mix until thick in consistency - about 10 minutes.  Add rice noodles and mix for 2 minutes, until noodles soften.  Remove from heat.


Serve soup with TVP as topping.  Attempt to eat the resulting sodium stew.


With enough salt to melt a glacier, the first bite is delicious.  Its not until the 7th bite that you realize that your body is being overwhelmed with processed food and industrial chemistry, and the resulting shutdown and rejection of the TVP is... challenging.

As a side note, as this wonderful dish cools it will form a hard gelatinous substance that resembles salty veggie TVP gelato.  Yum.

Making pizza.

Camp food fail. Garbanzos, peanut butter... and couscous?  Unclear.

If all else fails there´s always Nutella.