Below you will find my account of eating at McMurdo, but PBS did a whole special on it which has more privileged access and, like, moving pictures and stuff. I highly recommend watching that if you're at all interested in the food question.
As other pleasures in life are restricted or eliminated, food gains significance beyond mere nutrition. When removed from the comforts and diversions of civilisation for months or years at a time, polar explorers had to pay particular attention to the culinary side of their enterprise. Scott learned this the hard way on the Discovery, when their cook was so bad he was sent home after the first year and others took over his job in shifts. Shackleton, on his second visit to Antarctica, brought all sorts of tinned delicacies, and left a lot of them behind in his hut at Cape Royds, which the Terra Nova men would raid on day trips from Cape Evans. Scott was much more careful with his choice of cook on his second expedition, and in his journal he continually praises Clissold's cooking – though Atkinson, writing for a publication he knew no one would read, says that Archer (the ship's cook, who filled in after Clissold was invalided home) was a far superior chef, and made the miserable second winter that much more bearable.
The expeditions of the early 20th Century brought down crates and crates of imperishables – tinned vegetables, powdered milk and eggs, and dry goods like flour, sugar, and tea. These were necessary, of course, but were ultimately supplemental to the core of their diet, which was the produce of Antarctica itself. In fact, in a letter laying out contingency plans if the Terra Nova Expedition were stranded in Antarctica, Scott says not to worry for their safety because the continent provides enough food to keep a party happily fed; they would only be wanting the comforts of a civilised menu. Mostly what the continent provided was seals, whose meat (especially livers) contained enough Vitamin C to stave off scurvy, but penguins and their eggs also regularly passed through the kitchen, and the contents of the marine biologist's net – once properly enumerated and dissected, of course – would often end up in the frying pan. The Notothenia fish was commonly eaten at breakfast, appreciated for its 'sweet' and 'nutty' flavour. Notothenia’s claim to fame is the sugar in its blood that acts as an antifreeze, so this is hardly a surprise.
Thanks to the Antarctic Treaty forbidding the killing of animals for consumption, modern Antarctic larders are not stocked with local wildlife, and as far as I know, no one down there now has tasted the sweetness of Notothenia. They do, however, have the advantage of modern transport and food storage, not to mention a century's worth of advances in the study of nutrition, so the diet of the present-day Antarctican is fresher, healthier, and much more diverse.
McMurdo Station's annual food supply arrives in one lump delivery, every January, on a big cargo ship from California. From the harbour where the Discovery berthed, it goes into climate-controlled storage, either to the dry goods store or to the freezer, which is a whole building off the cafeteria in the main station hub. A freezer, in Antarctica? Why, yes, because food safety regulations require frozen food to be kept at a constant temperature, and the only way to ensure that is to build an enormous manmade freezer in the land of ice and snow. In the summer, temperatures at McMurdo will wander around freezing, so this is entirely practical, but for much of the year, it's actually warmer inside the freezer than outside.
The modern Antarctic commissariat is not entirely divorced from its Edwardian predecessor, though – frozen vegetables taste fresher than tinned, and are more nutritious and palatable, but they are not fresh; powdered milk and powdered eggs are still the status quo. During the summer, perishable groceries – called 'freshies' – come down on the flights from New Zealand, if there is room after the passengers and equipment are loaded. After a month of flight cancellations, fresh apples and oranges are greeted with as much delight as they were on the arrival of relief ships in the Heroic Age, and the appearance of a salad bar in the Galley prompts general rejoicing.
The US Antarctic Program has its roots in the Navy, and McMurdo is still provisioned by one of the big firms that supplies the US military. Having had experience with industrial-scale American catering in California, I had moderate expectations of the quality of food at McMurdo, but it was surprisingly good. One might argue that the excitement of being there and the daily energy expenditure would be a good sauce for anything, and this may be true, but against this I would argue that dry air impedes one's ability to taste – that fact it was so flavourful at all is significant. People kept apologising for the food in the Galley and I kept telling them, earnestly, that it was better than the food in the Disney commissary. They didn't believe me, but I firmly attest this; I ate at Disney on my return journey and have confirmed it by direct comparison. I know they were working with roughly the same quality of ingredients, but the chefs at McMurdo reliably made things delightful to eat, which is more than I can say for the other place. Why this should be is anyone's guess ... Working as a Galley Rat is one of the few ways enthusiasts can get down to the Ice, so it's full of keen, intelligent, and curious cooks, and maybe that rubs off on the food. There are people who come back to tackle the unique challenges of Antarctic cuisine year after year, so maybe they're more experienced and invested in the job. My personal theory is that because they have to eat the food, too, of course they're invested in making it tasty – I suspect the folks behind the counter in LA have much better meals waiting for them when they get home.
Mealtimes follow a strict schedule:
5:30-7:30 Breakfast (many a time I missed the cutoff, woe)
11:00-13:00 Lunch
17:00 to 19:30 Dinner. There was always a portion of the cafeteria serving breakfast food at this time; this was reserved for the night shift workers, who got a reprise of the day shift's dinner for their lunch. If you really liked whatever was served for dinner, nothing could stop you coming around again for another go at midnight.
The one exception to this was Sunday, when a brunch would be served from 10 to 12. The service in the chapel started at 10 as well, and was very weak competition. Brunch was always excellent, and being the single day off, was often where one would meet up with people who were too busy during the week.
If you failed to make a mealtime for any reason, there was always something on offer. A fridge would be stocked with packaged leftovers, sandwiches, and other food-to-go – when I had a day out, I would eat breakfast and then grab my lunch from this fridge. On one occasion, dinner included fried okra (one of my faves, rarely had outside the States) and after stuffing myself with it, I nabbed two or three extra portions and cached them in my dorm room mini-fridge to enjoy later.
In a challenging environment, with a lot of people doing energy-intensive jobs, calories are important. There was only one rule regulating portions: Take what you want, but eat what you take. With a finite amount of food on hand, and delivery only once a year, food waste is anathema – if you need it, then eat it, but do not throw any away.
The menu seemed to originate with whatever presented itself in the enormous freezer, though perhaps in November and December it was dictated more by what remained in it, prior to the new shipment. We didn't suffer for want of variety, though: if anything, we benefited from a surfeit of prawns, including great bowls of them at Sunday brunch. I found myself wondering if the US military had a contract for most of the catch from the Gulf, and how much of their famously inflated budget went into that; I suspect, in reality, the kitchen just hit a seam of prawn in the recesses of the freezer and had to use it up. As a devotee of all shapes of sea bug, I was in seventh heaven, and did my level best to help McMurdo clear the surplus.
Once new food was defrosted and cooked up, it would cascade through various dishes down the week, as leftovers were repurposed to minimise waste. Usually this was successful, but sometimes they had to try a little harder ...
A variety of cuisines were offered, some of which were more successful than others. They seemed to reflect the makeup of the US military, for whom the rations would have been designed. The best dishes were the meat-and-potatoes variety (my minder said that if she were on Death Row, she'd ask for McMurdo Pot Roast for her last meal), Italian, Southern (see above re: okra), and what I assume was Tex Mex – the only misstep on the last count was an almost inedibly hot 'taco soup' which may have been more of a delivery vehicle for leftovers than an intentional dish. The only disappointments were anything attempting to be Asian, and the fish, which, due to the circumstances, was always overcooked. Provision was always made for vegetarians and even vegans, but I can't say I noticed many people adhering strictly to those diets. I suppose if the animals are already dead and in the freezer, there's little difference whether you eat them or not.
There was also, always, pizza. It was left in one of those tiered heated racks like you get at a buck-a-slice takeaway pizzeria, but this was no buck-a-slice pizza, this was McMurdo pizza, and McMurdo pizza is AMAZING. My brother-in-law's cousin went to super legit pizza school in Naples, and gets queues down the street wherever he opens a pizzeria. He makes the best pizza I have ever had anywhere; McMurdo’s wasn't quite as good as his, but it was pretty darn close. It's a testament to how good the rest of the food was that I didn't just have pizza for every meal. The pizza kitchen runs 24 hours a day, and takes orders for pickup from all across the base. If you're flying out to a field camp, it's good manners to take their pizza order and deliver it to them hot and fresh. For all the advances in food technology since the Heroic Age, surely the greatest has to be the McMurdo Pizza.
We were reminded constantly how important hydration was, and the Galley offered a range of liquids at all hours. To my surprise, what looked like a soda fountain offered not pop but fruit juice – grapefruit, orange, cranberry, and apple, though one or more often ran out before the end of breakfast. There were enormous urns of extremely weak coffee – a provision, I supposed, for its diuretic effects – though with 10-hour workdays and very early starts, a little more oomph would have gone a long way. Experienced hands, and those of discerning tastes, brought their own coffee or sourced it somehow from the stores. The kitchenette in the Crary library was full of people's personal coffee-making supplies as they sought a more effective brew.
I had been warned that if I liked tea, I should bring my own; this was a sound warning, as the black tea on offer looked and smelled as though it had been on a shelf for about a decade. What I had not been warned about was that the only 'milk' on hand for one's coffee or tea was, in most places, 'coffee whitener', a ubiquitous Americanism which I'd completely forgotten about (or supressed?) since moving away. For those who've not had the privilege of its acquaintance, this is a blend of margarine, sugar, synthetic vanilla, and titanium dioxide, rendered into a powder by some unknown chemical process and packaged up to pass for milk. (I think it might be illegal in Europe. I've certainly not seen it around.) The Galley had the base's only dispenser of actual mammalian lactation – reconstituted from powdered, of course. If I were to go again, I would bring a small bottle to fill there with 'real' milk, which I could take away for tea purposes elsewhere. There were boxes of UHT milk available for purchase in the shop, and had I been staying longer I might have invested in some, but for just a splash per cuppa, it hardly seemed worthwhile.
The undisputed star of the Galley was the soft serve ice cream dispenser, named Frosty Boy (or Boi), an ancient beast that was such an institution that it was rumoured the USAP had bought another one from a junkyard just for parts. The Thing to Do was, instead of putting milk or coffee whitener in your coffee, to use a dollop of Frosty Boy instead – I'm not sure which end of the dairy/non-dairy spectrum his product was nearest, but it did go well in the coffee, such as it was. More often than not while I was there, Frosty Boy exuded only a watery splutter rather than creamy delight – even when he was working, the product was rather gritty – but I was assured he was just going through a phase, and would be right again soon. I got the impression that if anyone tried replacing the machine with something more reliable, or which produced something more resembling ice cream, there'd be a protest. We shall see if Frosty Boy survives the station revamp, as the NSF seems keen to scrub out any vestiges of character ...
I have brought two things back from the McMurdo Galley, and they're things that go right back to the beginning: powdered milk and powdered egg. Even when I'm near a shop with both in fresh form, it's convenient to have the powdered on hand for recipes. I really only use milk to splash in my tea and coffee, so don't keep a large amount in my fridge, but recipes often call for far more than I have – so instead of making a trip for the extra, I can just mix it up on demand. I've also taken on the Perpetual Yoghurt: McMurdo makes its own yoghurt from its vast reserves of powdered milk, using a bit of the last batch to inoculate the next, and it turns out this is perfectly doable at home, too. Eggs eaten as eggs are better fresh, of course, but when providing structure in a recipe, no one's going to notice if they've been reconstituted, and then I can save my 'real' eggs for when they'll be appreciated. It's a good system, and economical, too. Alas, the pizza isn't as easy to replicate at home ...
For more information on McMurdo food –
The Antarctic Sun newsletter put out this podcast: https://antarcticsun.usap.gov/features/4329/
I didn't mention how good the desserts were; I was lucky enough to share my time at McMurdo with Rose McAdoo, who was featured in this story on NPR: https://text.npr.org/779463164