Greek Night and Whiteout

It is nearly time for the first bunch of the Morrisons people to leave and the base has the distinct feeling of being in transition from summer to winter. The sun which has been an almost constant companion disappears over the horizon for over an hour now before re-appearing again but does provide some amazing photo opportunities.

I thought it would be churlish of me to let people leave before tasting my expert Greek culinary skills and so I organised a Hellas Spectacular. I choose the menu bearing in mind the ingredients that were left (supplies of eggs, flour, salt and veg were running low!!!) and with a little experimentation, 12hrs of solid cooking and the aid of my fellow chefs we came up with a Greek feast.....of sorts....

Dead on 7pm, with everything ready to be served, it was decided that I should be in traditional(!) dress so I legged it to my bunk, got changed and legged it back again to greet each dinner with my fluent..ish Greek. With a selection of some traditional Greek dance music folk soon got into the spirit and started dancing around the tables.

Thankfully all this happened before the Kitchen Disaster which occurred the following day. 2 hours before dinner was due to be served there was a loud explosion, all the fire alarms went off and the inside of the Laws building looked like it was experiencing an internal version of an Antarctic snow blizzard. One of the high velocity fire powder cannisters in the kitchen had malfunctioned and exploded sending a cloud of white powder over Chris, his recently prepared fishcakes and anything else that happened to be in the kitchen.We sealed off the kitchen and literally waited for the dust to settle before peaking in to see the damage.....absolutely everything was ruined - even the meat cooking in the oven had a lovely white coating on it

But the community spirit in this place is great. Everyone around the base was suddenly in the kitchen, stripping it out and cleaning every nook and cranny....it was amazing just where that powder went....whilst the chefs grabbed what sledges they could find and started transporting plates, cutlery and glasses across the snow to the Dewry building kitchen.

Dinner that night is a bit of a blur...I think it turned into curry and scampi.....nobody seemed to mind.