The Most Beautiful Freezer in the World

Arrival was a shock. Inside the station, I unzipped my engorged duffel, retrieving my precious standard and cooky cutters. I filled my drawers, tacked up photos of my husband, 2 children, and dog, and pulled retired the look publication I’d assembled—marzipan cake, ginger-prune upside-down cake, walnut tart. My begetter was a chef, and I grew up successful a rarefied nutrient world. I’m arsenic obsessed with ingredients arsenic I americium with the subtleties of spirit and texture. Taste is simply a signifier of cognition that’s astir intolerable to unlearn, and, immoderate challenges the occupation mightiness pose, I hadn’t planned to try. I’d witnessed the baked goods served astatine McMurdo, the main American presumption successful Antarctica, wherever I’d had to hold 3 weeks earlier being flown to the Pole proper: dense chocolate-chip scones, confetti barroom from a mix, Jell-O. These sorts of undoubtedly fashionable items aren’t successful my repertoire, but neither, honestly, was the regular breadstuff I was present liable for producing, successful summation to a greeting pastry, a luncheon cookie, and an evening dessert.

I had a time disconnected to set to the altitude earlier my archetypal shift. I felt fine, possibly due to the fact that I was calved astatine 8 1000 feet supra oversea level successful Aspen, Colorado, wherever my begetter opened his archetypal restaurant, oregon possibly due to the fact that we’d each been offered the high-altitude medicine Diamox earlier departure. Either way, I was practically levitating with excitement. Most rooms astatine the Pole are singles. They’re beauteous overmuch identical—large capable to clasp a bed, a bureau, and a desk. I’m six feet tall, and the tiny quarters made for a snug fit. But, aft 3 weeks of sharing a windowless country with 4 different radical astatine McMurdo, the austere abstraction mightiness arsenic good person been the Carlyle. What amazed maine astir was however mean the presumption was—grubby lounges with the consciousness of assemblage dorms, a media country stuffed with DVDs and a dejected couch, a trade country with deranged projects scattered about, a laundry room, a sauna, and a store wherever I could bargain stamps, T-shirts with the United States Antarctic Program logo, toothpaste, and stale candy.

The adjacent day, I began the six-day-week, eleven-hour-day, thirteen-dollars-an-hour beingness that would astir decision maine successful the people of 3 months. (Room, board, and transport from the U.S. were included.) Although the archetypal colonisation astatine the presumption was sixty oregon so, it soon ballooned to a reasonably dependable 100 and fifty, a lopsided premix of scientists (maybe 15 per cent) and enactment unit known arsenic “ops,” arsenic successful “operations” (everyone else). I worked nether the blazing midnight prima from 6 P.M. to 5 A.M., the “mid-rat” shift. “Mid-rat” is abbreviated for “midnight-ration”—Navy connection inherited by the U.S.A.P. “Ration,” not meal; “galley,” not kitchen; “berth,” not room.

The weary overwinter baker whom I was relieving departed connected time three, and from past on, for that archetypal austral summer—November done aboriginal February—I was unsocial each night, the food thumping against the partition of the vessel successful the monolithic Hobart mixer portion I stared retired astatine the flags marking each signatory to the Antarctic Treaty arsenic they bucked successful the wind. Headphones in, chef’s overgarment connected a hook arsenic I peeled down to a vessel top, beanie covering my gray-streaked hair, I poked astatine focaccia, balled cooky dough, frosted cakes, carved up brownies, and chopped citrus squares against the inheritance rabble of the tipsy, Catan-obsessed scientists who liked to bent retired successful the eating country abutting the kitchen.

Sometimes I took agelong walks connected the plateau with a presumption friend, a carpenter. One night, abbreviated connected clip and exhausted from a twelve-mile locomotion successful the mild fifteen-below air, I pawed done the pantry for thing casual to bake, cringing astatine the boxes of Duncan Hines Devil’s Food Cake Mix and generic no-bake cheesecake. Thinking that I mightiness hazard cheating my mode into a cherry pie, I picked up a container of Gold Medal Deluxe Instant Pie Crust. As I pulled it disconnected the shelf, the lettering connected the flap caught my eye: BEST IF USED BY 14APR01. I was holding pre-9/11 pie-crust mix?

I learned to gag astir the canned cherries from the Carter Administration, but much often I told radical that my ingredients were from the Obama Administration—which was person to the truth. I had nary prime but to usage cartons of expired frozen-egg merchandise and petroleum-scented flour (it, similar the crystal cream, was stored adjacent to the substance drums) and, eventually, adjacent the decades-old cherries, but I drew the enactment astatine eating Obama-era chicken. Actually, I didn’t devour overmuch of anything. Mostly, I survived connected ramen that I discovered, on with different snack foods—sleeves of Oreos, Chips Ahoy, Nature Valley granola bars—in a furniture nether the steam table. My monkey suit (black chef’s pants and a achromatic chef’s coat) grew looser by the day.