Mmmmmmm

I love food. I love to cook and bake too but here at the station we have awesome cooks who are much more talented than I am and they make us three wonderful meals every day, except Sunday which is fend for yourself day.

We do have opportunities to go into the kitchen and dabble around with whatever we’re inspired to make.

Here’s Robert showing Francie how to make spatzle, a favorite dish from his native Germany. Note the steely concentration as they extrude the dough to make little spatzle balls. And it’s a requirement to wear pseudo-lederhosen while making Bavarian dishes.

My own little claim to culinary fame around here is making the bagels during the winter. Every couple of weeks I make a batch of about 7 dozen bagels.

This is the dough after it’s risen – my favorite part is punching it down.

I always recruit helpers for rolling out the bagels.

Stef has the bagel rolling technique down and Brien is behind him churning out those dough blobs.

Brien is my senior dough cutter and he now has an innate sense for what a 4 oz portion of dough looks and feels like. Steffen, another German scientist but sans lederhosen, is learning how to roll the dough. He did a fine job of turning the 4 oz blobs of dough into round bagelly looking things.

And this is the final product.

Michael is the one who turns them into beautifully bronzed and glazed bagels, first boiling then baking them and then topping them with various goodies.

By the way, Michael Rehm is our local celebrity.

Michael modeling for the action figures soon to be marketed in Polemart

Last night, he was featured on the Colbert Report for the second time! Click here to see the segment. It’s quite funny and Steven Colbert has issued forth the challenge to Michael to design a Colbert Nation flag that he wants flown at the South Pole instead of the other nation’s flags. Hmmm. I guess anything would better than that boring French flag (just kidding Denis).