Food for Thought.

The butter sticks as it’s slapped to the cold black pan.

Across the ice shelf, about 50 miles away, are Cape Royds and Cape Evans. From here, they look like nothing more than a jagged coastline of Ross Island. Do a little research and find that they are a little bit more than a coast line. They are names written into history, places where explorers fought the ice, the cold and their own bodies. Funny how something is just a stretch of land until a name claims the stories and the lore that comes with it. Stories that are tied to names like anchors to a line. 

The butter begins to ooze, spreading gold liquid in every direction.

I’ve never been to Cape Evans or Cape Royds myself, but the book I’m reading, Hoosh, brings them to life. It’s about the history of food in Antarctica, of survival carved from the bones of this place. These capes were the starting points for Shackleton and Scott, for their expeditions. Huts still stand there, wooden time capsules, where some men were saved, but others died slow, wasting deaths. Some men were warm again, others starved while laying in seal grease. 

The butter splat-splat-splats with a sound that reminds me of my grandma’s kitchen.

The men at those capes hunted Weddell seals and penguins, slaughtering life from the ice just to stay alive. Fifty miles away from this butter on the pan, they butchered seals on blood-streaked ice, their blades dulling against blubber and bone. They boiled the meat into greasy, unappetizing meals that stuck in their teeth and sat heavy in their stomachs. Flavors didn’t matter. Nutrition barely mattered. Survival was all that did at the end of the day. 

An egg is tapped twice, gently against the pan, and laid down to soak up the golden liquid.

Scott’s men rationed their food carefully, but it was never enough. They marched toward the pole with their bodies devouring themselves. Thousands of calories burned in the unrelenting cold, thousands more denied. Muscles shrank. Joints creaked. Eyeballs sunk into skulls. Skin stretched tight over cheekbones as the frostbite crept closer. They wrote letters home that they knew would never be sent. They described their stomachs growling louder than the winds outside. 

I sprinkle salt and garlic powder over the egg.

At Cape Evans, they found a man’s body frozen stiff. The hollow of his stomach had collapsed inward, a telltale sign of starvation. Teeth marks on sealskin boots and blubber hinted at the desperation. They ate what they could, and then what they shouldn’t. Hunger turns a man into something he doesn’t recognize.

The egg bubbles and hisses in the pan.

The history of Antarctic expeditions is written in frostbite and scurvy, in frostbitten fingers and gums that bled black. Scott’s team carried tins of poorly preserved food—high in fat, low in nutrition. Even the sled dogs couldn’t stomach it sometimes, leaving the men to drag their own supplies through endless white nothingness.

The yolk quivers as I poke it with the spatula.

In their journals, the explorers wrote about hunger as if it were a living thing, clawing at their insides. Edward Wilson described it as a beast that “howls louder each night.” Frostbitten hands trembled as they shoveled snow into boiling pots for water, dreaming of meat that didn’t taste like grease and regret. Frostbite claimed fingers, noses, and toes. Skin blackened and sloughed off. Scott’s men tied their frostbitten hands into knots of cloth, fumbling through tasks until pain became a dull hum. At night, they huddled in sleeping bags stiff with ice, dreaming of warmth they’d never feel again.

The egg flips, the golden yolk oozing slightly into the butter.

By the time Scott’s team turned back from the pole, they were already dead men walking. Exhausted, emaciated, dragging sleds on borrowed time. They built makeshift shelters to die in, one by one. When their bodies were found, the frost had preserved them, frozen in agony. A tin of biscuits, unopened, lay beside Scott’s hand. His final journal entry read: “It seems a pity, but I do not think I can write more.”

I grab a plate from the cupboard, smooth ceramic in my warm hands.

I have everything here,food, warmth, safety. I look across the ice shelf, toward the distant capes, and try to imagine them there. It is really quite hard to picture something so drastic while standing in front of a heater and window. It feels like watching a tragedy on the news from your couch at home. If you weren't there, it's just a story.

 Huddled in huts, wind howling outside, frost creeping in through every crack. Their world was ice, snow, and silence. Their world was skin growing tight with starvation, cheeks going hollow, acid growing in stomachs, delusions coming to mind.  Mine is butter, eggs, and garlic powder. 

I place the egg on the plate and take a seat at the table.

Their stories are written in starvation and survival. Mine is written in comfort and contrast. Fifty miles away, across the ice shelf, they fought for every breath. Here, I savor every bite. Fifty miles away, across the ice shelf, they left their names carved into history. They left huts filled with the echoes of laughter that faded into groans. I eat my egg, the yolk spilling gold onto the plate, as their stories spill into my mind, the events that happened to get me, here. How the world has changed. This egg is taken for granted quite often, I must say. Cape Evans and Cape Royds are just names of a landscape. I can see them from my window. The stories that linger to the landscape say a lot more about how it is possible for me to be eating a fried egg under the wilson piedmont glacier