Band Blog!!

Band blog Band blog, Ya Ya Ya!

Yes, there is even music during a Palmer Station winter. A surprisingly huge turnout actually. There are 18 of us here for the winter and 7 of them show up every Tuesday in TerraLab for band practice. That's almost half the station! Sweet.

Some of us played a little open mic in the bar before the last boat left, but now that we have months ahead of us we can really sit and practice some songs. There are people of all different skill levels so it's nice to learn new things and teach some things as well.


This is Johnny on the right and Cory on the left. Johnny was actually at Pole with me last winter. He didn't play there so it was awesome to see what he can do. And he rocks! Singing and playing!


This is Sean our Electrician. He just picked up the mandolin when we got here in April and hasn't put it down. It sounds great with all the songs we picked, especially the bluegrass tune!


This is Steve Sweet in the front and Buttercup in the back. I know Buttercup (Andrew) from my summer at Pole. Both Steve and Drew make up the acoustic section of the band. And I included Steve's last name because one band name in the running is "Steve Sweet and the Sweet Steve's." Can't get much more apropos than that!!


This here's Cory our one resident scientist. I guess this makes him the chief scientist. He's here studying fish. He's actually mating them! NOT mating with them. Let's make that clear. There are no Troy McLure's down here...

Cory is our shredder guitarist. Not much more to say. Slash, eat your heart out!


I find these next two pictures awesome! This is the Palmer Station drum kit. Perfect for the little space that we have. But it is literally a Playskool or Fisher Price first drum kit. Note the empty buckets used as toms. Classic ICE.


And this is Capt. Dave Bardun. Some of you may know him. He is of April the Leukemic Cat fame. This is the guy that goes home and plays awesome music in his basement on a huge drum kit. He is clearly not a Fisher Price guy. But he makes do. He's also singing on a couple songs.


Look at that friggin bass! Awesome! We dub it "Satan's Bass" because it was most certainly forged by the Dark Lord himself in the 7th circle of hell. I mean, LOOK at it! Sweet.



Now I'm not one to TOOT my own horn, but I've started learning this and I think I'm catching on. I've never been much of a guitarist. I can read tab but not notes. I've never done the percussion side of things before and it is a change. But I'm catching on and really liking it.



Johnny, Cory and myself are putting together a lengthy acoustic Metallica medley with all our favorite parts of various songs. We can't really loud here like we could at Pole, we we can definitely wail on acoustic guitars/basses. And Satan's Bass.



So far our set list is...
Island in the Sun-Weezer
Used to Call Me Baby-Split Lip Rayfield
Creep-Radiohead
Out Loud-Dispatch

And we have a couple more to practice as time goes on.

Stay tuned for Mid Winter Photos...

Keith-san Sushi Chef!!!

So I skipped another week. Big deal. I'm tired. And sometimes when your hung ove...er, tired, on your day off, the last thing you want to do is sit at a computer for an hour.

And yes, last weekend was the Mid Winter Dinner feast. It went really well. I'm currently gathering some pictures together to show that off. Everybody pitched in from setting the tables to prepping to washing dishes. Great feast. I'll post that soon.

In the meantime, I played Sushi chef this week with a sushi dinner in the bar. I learned how to do this from Diane, the woman who worked here this past summer and trained me before she left on the last boat. Let's take a look...


First you need a sushi board. I don't know the technical term. Bamboo sushi wrap thing. Make sure you wrap it in cellophane to keep it clean. You don't have to but it cuts down on cleaning up and cross contamination if your making more than on kind of sushi.

Fold the corners in.

Sushi rice is different than regular rice. More starchy. Cook with a 1:1 ratio rather than 2:1. Meaning 1 cup of rice to 1 cup of water. Leave it covered on the stove over low heat for about 40 minutes. Crunchy rice sucks. This batch didn't work out the best and was a little al dente. But no matter. It's sushi in Antarctica! And cooking rice here is a bitch anyway. It was easier with the elevation and dryness of Pole to cook rice. I don't know what it is. Anyway, add one cup of rice vinegar and one cup of sugar...

...fan the rice with a plate or something to help it cool...

...make sure all your ingredients are laid out in front of you for easy access. This process can be a pain so you want it to go quick.

Lay the seaweed out on the sushi-bamboo-wrap-thing...

...moisten it with water so when you roll it, it sticks to itself...

...put a glob of rice on half the seaweed and press it down...

...so it lays nice and flat on the seaweed.

Put your desired filling on top of the rice. In this case it's smoked salmon and cream cheese...

...begin rolling...

...tightening as you go until...

...you have a perfectly rolled sushi roll.

Next we take it up to the bar...

...where we cut it and plate it on a fancy little sushi table.









There are four kinds of sushi here, even a tofu carrot avocado sushi for the vegetarians. It gets put in the middle of the table...

...so everybody can gather around and move around to get what they want.





Bede, Chris and Sean wait their turn while SteveO goes for a piece off camera.

I made 90 total rolls of sushi and there was some left at the end of the night. But everyone did a pretty good job of destroying what was put in front of them. Rumor has it that the great Neal Scheibe had a total of 50 pieces!!! How he is such a skinny bastard, I'll never know!

When the service is over I get to unwind with my new glasses.

Sushi night was fun and we'll probably do it one more time before the boat comes back. Stay tuned for more food fun this week. I'll get a MidWinter blog together. Later!

Stuffed Pork Loin and Homemade Falafel...

Megan!!! This first one's for you. My dear friend Megan gave me this fantastic self compiled cookbook whilst I was in Denver in April. It has some of her favorite tasty recipes. I was happy to try the Falafel as I have never made it from scratch before.

This is the book! Awesome!

We don't have all the ingredients, like shallots for example, but I substituted red onion and it worked just fine.

Mix all the ingredients together in a big bowl. Mashed chick peas, egg, spices, bread crumbs, whatever freshies are on hand...

Form into little cakes. You can make these as big as you want. You need the proper mix of bread crumbs and egg so it can all bind together...



When they are seared, put them in the oven and bake till hot.

I garnished this one with a lime tomato salsa with cilantro and fresh Tzatziki, a yogurt cucumber dish with garlic, lemon juice and dill.

Even Clair likes it. She'll eat anything!!! SeeFood!

Next is apricot stuffed pork loin. Kind of an involved process. Let's begin...

Take your loins of pork...

...cut it as much in half as you can but not all the way. You don't want to cut through it...

...and pound it gently with a meat tenderizer. You want to pound the inside in order to keep the skin intact so your finished product will look good. Be gentle because tenderloins of any kind are just that. Tender. Too thin and you lose the integrity of the meat.

Finished tenderizing.

These are the ingredients I stuffed the loin with. Fresh red peppers, julianne yellow onion, dried apricots and slivers of garlic.

Saute it all together adding whatever spices you see fit.

When it has cooled, place some filling into each of the open tenderloins...

...then carefully begin to roll it back up.

Tie a knot with butcher's twine at the top of the loin...

...wrap the other end around the pork and pull the tied end through. It's very difficult to explain in type.

You continue this down the entire loin tying it off at the bottom. This obviously keeps all the filling in.

When you are ready to cook it, lightly dredge it in flour mixed with sea or kosher salt and black pepper. Always good to season the flour...

...sear on all four sides so the whole thing is toasty brown, then bake till its cooked!

Then you have a wonderful Stuffed Pork Tenderloin. (The green one in the picture is fresh spinach and bleu cheese. Also fantastic.

Stay tuned! Next week is Mid Winter Dinner. Awesome celebrations all over the continent. We'll have a great dinner here. Dave is working on designing the menu. I'll post that to. Very exciting...