Hey, you got meat in my salad!

One of the nice things about being at the South Pole is that you can focus solely on work, undistracted by normal things like bills, cooking, or even daily showering. I've started working on a new feature several times over the past couple of months only to be distracted by other problems, but after less than a week here, I'm making good progress and should have it finished before I leave next week! Speaking of cooking, the food at South Pole is always good and sometimes it's fantastic. This year the chefs seem to be producing a more meat-centric menu, where the main course is roast beef or pork chops or sirloin ... pure unadulterated MEAT. At home I'm the cook and I try to make vegetarian meals at least 5 nights a week, not because of any philosophical stance but purely for health reasons. The cooks here always provide a non-meat alternative, but where in past years it was equally as good as the meat entree (and sometimes better), this year it seems to be more of a begrudging after-thought. There are usually two or three salads to go along with the meal, so if the veggie entree is lame, I usually just get the hot vegetable side dish and pad out my meal with salads -- and desserts Yesterday the entree was pork chops with mashed potatoes and gravy. I was happy to see that the gravy was vegetarian, because the none-meat offering was a bland, dry veggie loaf. I loaded up my plate with mashed potatoes and a slab of veggie loaf, dumped gravy all over it, and moved down the line to the salads. There I saw coleslaw, a pasta salad, and an avocado/pepper/beef salad. BEEF SALAD!!! And they wonder why people in isolated places go insane :-)