Some insight into field biology

I know this is (or is supposed to be most of the time) a “scientific blog”, but I’d like to shed some light on another aspect of field biology: The food.

I feel that mostly field biology is supposed to be tramping around in the woods from dawn until dusk, climbing mountains, fording rivers, and surviving on some granola and oranges from your field pack. I once heard field biologists described as the jocks of the scientific world. As much as I hate to dispel the myth, the truth is that our work here in Costa Rica looks a little more like this: collect leaf litter and water from bromeliads, bring back to the station, and sit on the porch in shorts and flip flops for the rest of the day sorting through it.  While we do have to go and find said bromeliads, most of them are not too far afield. (The other day I was at one of my field sites and I sneezed… someone in the kitchen said ‘bless you’ out the window). And now that the collecting is completed and various experiments are merrily ticking along with minimal supervision, what do we do at the station?  We learn to cook.

I am not the cook in my family. My specialty is usually doing the dishes. But the number of things I have learned to cook from scratch while living at Pitilla station is rapidly growing! So far on the list is rice (trust me, I couldn’t do it before), bread/pizza dough, tortillas, plantain chips, cinnamon crepes, curry (more or less from scratch), and macaroni and cheese from scratch (I could do that before but certainly not unsupervised). This is the reason why most of us GAIN a few pounds doing field work rather than losing as we usually expect:

Wednesday

Breakfast: Cinnamon crepes with honey and maple syrup

Lunch: Rice and beans (of course) with fried plantain

Dinner: Chickpea curry with carrots, rice and sweet potato/potato/manioc hash browns

Thursday

Breakfast: Rice pudding with raisins, brown sugar, and honey with canned peaches

Lunch: Leftovers – curry, rice, and tortillas

Dinner: Plantain chips and fried queso seco appetizer, Macaroni and cheese and the obligatory beans

Friday

Breakfast: Fresh baked banana bread (thank you Jana!)

Lunch: leftover mac n’ cheese with garlic cheese bread, steamed broccoli, and beans

Dinner: Pizza and beer night!  Pizza with dough from scratch, oven roasted garlic, and cervezas!

 All supplemented by a steady snack diet of coffee and cookies and baby bananas with dulce de leche.  mmmmm…

…It’s a tough job but somebody’s gotta do it!