Wednesday 14 July 2004
Extreme barbeques
Now it's summer back home I'm sure there are plenty of barbeques happening, and no doubt some of them end up moving indoors due to rain. Well rain isn't something we have to contend with down here but we do have a whole different set of problems. We had a barbeque at midwinter outside on the open platform when it was -40C. The barbeque is made out of an old oil drum and was filled with snow so the first job was to clear that out. Lighting it turned out to be a bit of a drama because it was so cold. We poured some petrol on the wood and lobbed a match in but it just went out - it was just too cold for the petrol to vapourise. Eventually we got it going using a lot of petrol, a rag and most of a box of matches.
Another common problem at Halley Barbeques is trying to stop your beer from freezing. Usually the best approach is to put your beer on top of the barbeque to keep it warm. Even wine becomes thick and slushy and you have to watch out for your lips sticking to the glass! Now this might all seem like a lot of effort to go to but it's all part of the fun and part of the great British barbeque tradition. Unfortunately this time we had a fair bit of wind too so it really was quite unpleasant out there so people tended to cook their food and get inside pretty quickly.
Posted by simon at 11:05 PM