昨天试验室新年晚会，老板赏饭，大家捧场。
地点选在某意大利馆子里面。按试验室中国同事的看法，appetizer很好，正餐没有存在的价值。当然这些都是对西餐有偏见的人。
头盘里面有chips和sauce，chip是深棕色的，看去有点像古早年间吃过的红薯片。蘸的sauce被大家一致公认为很棒。看上去像cheese烩菠菜，但是cheese味道淡到几乎没有，然后一位美食家品尝出来里面的主料是蟹肉。
还有一道salmon，很……粉红。我立刻想起前不久关于鱼生的讨论，脑中警铃大作。一尝之下，却发现是烟薰过的。配料里有一小碟像植物种籽的东西，很像油淋过的青花椒，当然更像是胡椒。不过不可能是胡椒吧？看到有位同事在一片salmon上加了十几粒，一口吞下去，安然无恙。
老板训话之后，终于落座开吃。先是salad。昏暗的灯光下，看到salad的顶上有几片粉红色的小东西，以为又是salmon，再一尝，是非常清甜的小橘子瓣。里面的cheese很好吃，一入口全是cheese那种浓郁的dairy香气，最后的回味才有令部分人士反感的可以形容为上帝之足的味道，当然这已经足够让大部分人一口接一口吃下去。配料里还有新鲜核桃和一粒粒的小黑点（poppy seed?）。酱汁稀薄到几乎没有，不过正好让cheese的浓味完全发挥出来。
大概是与会人士太多，为了避免点菜的混乱，所有的人被强迫归类，你是牛还是鸡？我点了牛排。五分熟，很厚的一块，高达至少一英寸半，大概是为了让juicy的部分尽可能多。浇的汁很浓厚，。完全没有放盐和胡椒的必要，美国南方人民放起盐来常常比全国人民手重。我喜欢的是配菜的土豆泥，加了碎cheese，而且是出锅以后加的，可以分明的感觉到土豆泥里面的一小点又一小点。
甜点我选了brownie加ice cream。我更prefer欧洲风味，不过二选一的另一个选项是我更不喜欢的pie。这块brownie嘛，当然很甜，这世上大概还从来没有过不甜的brownie。不过作为一个甜牙齿人士，只要甜点里放的糖没到标准recipe的两倍，那就还可以接受。何况这块brownie的巧克力味够厚够重，ice cream的香草味也足够浓。同桌的男同事照例摆出一幅“甜点有什么意思”的死相，我在他们鄙夷的目光中消灭了整个dish，抱着圆滚滚的肚子回了家。
一顿饭
这种馆子也就是挂个意大利的牌子罢了。烟熏三文鱼是苏格兰的最好，如果是野生的，啧啧，那价钱 
capers应该比胡椒粒大很多吧？即使胡椒是整粒的。
火星狗你们实验室有多少人哪？竟然大到要归类的程度。
capers应该比胡椒粒大很多吧？即使胡椒是整粒的。
火星狗你们实验室有多少人哪？竟然大到要归类的程度。
http://harps.yculblog.com
搬家了搬家了
搬家了搬家了
苏格兰的野生三文鱼可不止十块一磅。忘了在哪里看的， Harrold's有卖真正野生手作烟熏三文鱼，200克400多港币。虽然我觉得普通店里的，如果不是那么咸，是挺好吃的。不知道顶级的到底有多好吃，有机会要试试。
http://harps.yculblog.com
搬家了搬家了
搬家了搬家了
二十来口，不过昨天大家都带家属，又有和老板要好的教授来吃他，来了大概50号人。火星狗你们实验室有多少人哪？竟然大到要归类的程度。
有两种劈叉我死也不爱。纯cheese的，还有cheese加salami的。当年我们系里开seminar，秘书专订这两种，坚持了好几年。直到我离开学校，才不用受这种折磨。对于我来说，烟熏三文鱼就好像劈叉饼，when it is good, it is really good; when it is bad, it is still pretty good
祝肥！最后决定去北方印度馆子吃包肥
说正经的，我羡慕你们老板的包容度，我们老板死忠美国口味。我心胸宽广的说，别忘了写游记。那可是一望无际的salmon, herring和ham
yeah, once I bought tomatoes at farmer's market, not organic, but the taste was soooooooooo good, even Shuangshuang ate her whole share (she usually hates tomatoes) and asked for more the next weekKnowing wrote:嗯，有机本身不保证好吃。但是有机（尤其走地）鸡长的慢，不是催肥的，就好吃些。有机蔬菜也一样。
我已经很潮的从有机发展到本地。吃了半年本地有机蔬菜，觉得的确好吃些，菜有菜味。明显的是西红柿，大多数现代品种杂交过，皮厚方便长途运输，老种的多数皮薄。另外本地西红柿是熟了才摘，比青着摘下来捂红的超市西红柿味道足的多。一个夏天下来吃刁了，连WHOLEFOODS 里的西红柿也嫌不好吃了。
Among organic veges, potato tastes much better than non-organic ones. Tomato is not that different.
钻石恒久远
ing
唯一的出路就是多在农贸市场买菜，到当地的小农场买肉。前不久<Newsweek>或者< Time>上有篇文章，比较organic和local food,据说whole food的老板也说自己会选择local, because it simply tastes better.Knowing wrote:嗯，有机本身不保证好吃。但是有机（尤其走地）鸡长的慢，不是催肥的，就好吃些。有机蔬菜也一样。
我已经很潮的从有机发展到本地。吃了半年本地有机蔬菜，觉得的确好吃些，菜有菜味。明显的是西红柿，大多数现代品种杂交过，皮厚方便长途运输，老种的多数皮薄。另外本地西红柿是熟了才摘，比青着摘下来捂红的超市西红柿味道足的多。一个夏天下来吃刁了，连WHOLEFOODS 里的西红柿也嫌不好吃了。生菜也特别明显，当天砍下来的汁多甜脆，搁冰箱里过几天就没那么好吃。
当然，要是住在加州，还是可以选择local organic的。
对，要是找得到，当然买当地的最好了。 只是大多数人住在大城市里，除了可在农贸市场买当地的蔬菜水果以外，卖肉的local farms不好找啊。 超市里的有机食物都是industrial organic, 大型农场养的。 我抄一段书里的话给你看. 作者去Whole Foods买了有机的鸡Rosie,
I aslo visited Rosie the organic chicken at her farm in Petaluma, which turns out to be more animal factory than farm. She lives in a shed with twenty thousand other Rosies, who, aside from their certified organic feed, live lives little different from that of any other industrial chicken. Ah, but what about the "free-range" lifestyle promised on the label? True, there's a little door in the shed leading out to a narrow grassy yard. But the free-range story seems a bit of a stretch when you discover that the door remains firmly shut until the birds are at least five or six weeks old -- for fear they'll catch something outside -- and the chickens are slaughters only two weeks later.
The last stop on my tour of California industrial organic farming took me to Petaluma, where I tried without success to find the picturesque farmstead, with its red barn, cornfield, and farmhouse, depicted on the package in which the organic roasting chicken I bought at Whole Foods has been wrapped; nor could I find Rosie herself, at least not outdoors, ranging freely.
...processing, on different days of the week, chickens for the kosher, Asian, natural, and organic markets. Each required a slightly different protocol: to process a kosher bird you needed a rabbi on hand; for an Asian bird you left the head and feet on; for the natural market you sold the same bird minus head and feet, but played up the fact that Rocky, as this product was called, received no antibiotics or animal by-products in its feed, and you provided a little exercise yard outside the shed so Rocky could, at his option, range free. And to call a bird organic, you followed the natural protocol except that you also fed it certified organic feed and you processed the bird slightly younger and smaller, so it wouldn't seem quite so expensive.Rosie the organic chicken's life is little different from that of her kosher and Asian cousins, all of whom are conventional Cornish Cross broilers processed according to state-of-the-art industrial practice. The Cornish Cross represents the pinnacle of industrial chicken breeding. It is the most efficient converter of corn into breast meat ever designed, though this efficiency comes at a high physiological price: The birds grow so rapidly (reaching oven-roaster proportions in seven weeks) that their poor legs cannot keep pace, and frequently fail.The chicen houses don't resemble a farm so much as a military barracks: a dozen long, low-slung sheds with giant fans at either end. I donned what looked like a hooded white hazmat suit - since the birds receive no antibiotics yet live in close confinement, the company is ever worried about infection, which could doom a whole house overnight - and stepped inside. Twenty thousand birds moved away from me as one, like a ground-hugging white cloud, clucking softly. The air was warm and humid and smlled powerfully of ammonia; the fumes caught in my thraot. Twenty tousand is a lot of chickens, and they formed a gently undulating white carpet that stretched nearly the lenth of a football field.
...
Running along the entire length of each shed was a grassy yard maybe fifteen feet wide, not nearly big enough accommodate all twenty thousand birds inside should the group ever decide to take the air en masse. Which, truth be told, is the last thing the farm managers want to see happen, since these defenseless, crowded, and gentically identical birds are exquisitely vulnerable to infection. This is one of the larger ironies of growing organic food in an industrial system: It is even more precarious than a conventional system. But the federal rules say an organic chicken should have "access to the outdoors," so Petaluma Poultry provides the doors and the yard and everyone keeps their fingers crossed.
It would appear Petaluma's farm managers have nothing to worry about. Since the food and water and flock remain inside the shed, and since the little doors remain shut until the birds are at least five weeks old and well settled in their habits, the chickens apparently see no reason to venture out into what must seem to them an unfamiliar and terrifying world. Since the birds are slaughtered at seven weeks, free range turns out to be not so much a lifestyle for these chickens as a two-week vacation option.[/quote]
