A day at the Lab

There is no normal here at the Lab, every day is different. 

Here is a look at what happened last Wednesday-

Arielle, a former NFL intern has come back to work with us for the next 3 weeks. She arrived today bearing fermented gifts. Arielle is getting her PhD at UC Davis so she brought us a whole collection fermented foods from The Culture Shop in Berkley. We eagerly broke open the jars and tasted them all. Pictured above you see (from top left going clockwise)- a whole apple, [can't remember], spring onion, watermelon rind, [can't remember], burdock root, and garlic all of which have been fermented in miso or kasu.

While we were tasting these fermented treats, Ben was preparing lunch.
When Ben arrived at work today his inbox was empty so he said "fuck it, I'm making lunch and I'm going all out."

He made these beautiful tomatoes- deep fried, then rolled in sugar, and topped with a slice of paper garlic and herbs; they were then put in the dehydrator to dry out. They were unbelievably delicious- like little drops if sweet tomato candy with a spicy kick from the garlic. mmm.

Ben rolled out some homemade pasta which he cooked up with some of herring anchovies which we call "koji chovies." He also made a green bean, red pepper, and onion salad with a delicious saffron sauce, a cabbage salad, and skirt steak which he topped with those delicious tomatoes. Oh, and some fresh bread too.

After cleaning up from lunch and a few more hours of deep concentration and hard work, things got a little playful at the lab. It was after five but Ben, Justine, Sarah and I were still working away. Sarah was bottling a sauce we had made and was sealing the bottles with beeswax. We thought it would be cool to have an NFL seal pressed into the wax tops. So, we found some potatoes and had a little competition to see who could carve the nicest NFL stamp.

Justine won the competition despite the fact that her "N" was backwards. Unfortunately though the potato was not firm enough to make a nice indentation in the wax. Regardless, it was a fun way to spend 45 minutes of the work day.