>>Kirt (about kefer, which I will promise to now spell correctly):
>>though it tastes like chalk (at best) and an
>>infant's spit-up (at worst) to my tongue. Melisa really digs it though.
>>Perhaps you'll post about it after a time...

>Roy:
>Actually the early results that I got last night were really nice.
>Even my wife, who is usually very suspicious of my "chemistry experiments"
>tried it because it smelled really good (like "paneer", she said). We
>ate quite a lot, and there was no stop in sight.

Kirt:
It will be interesting to see how kefer made with raw milk might compare as
regards taste-change...and how much is "quite a lot"...and great about your
wife liking it: the family that RAFs together, laughs together <-- another
retarded slogan for Tom to decimate ;)

>Remember I was a vegan for many years previous to my RAW experiments (except
>for the occasional pizza).

Interesting. Maybe you'll end up gonzo on shellfish at some point as well ;)

>Roy:
>By the way, I got some king salmon sashimi from a local Japanese supermarket
>yesterday. It tasted so sweet that I could have sworn that somebody had
>dipped it in honey before packaging it. I know that they marianate mackrel
>and some other fish in vinegar, but I'm not sure if they soak other stuff
>into the fish to enhance the taste. Anyway, later into the meal the
>sweetness disappeared. Therefore I suspect this was a stop, and that there
>was nothing special about the sashimi. I'm still amazed as to how delicious
>and sweet it tasted.

A lot of salmon served as sashimi has been thawed, and most is farmed (the
fat content is higher more consistantly than wild). But...so what ;)

>I never dreamed that sashimi could taste so good.
>I was in Seattle two weeks ago and decided to take your advice to try out
>the wild salmon. I wasn't able to make it to Pike, since I was on the east
>side at Microsoft. So I got some from the Uwajimaya on the east side.
>It was delicious, but nowhere near yesterday's "honey drenched" taste.

Wild salmon ages really well.

Umajimaya also has a branch downtown, and is an OK place to shop for
seafood (they didn't seem to have the best shellfish though), and any place
that sells thawed durian (!) is always worth a visit. ;)

>On a related note, I'm rather pissed with that supermarket because last
>week I got some marianated octapus, which they swore was raw. It tasted
>partially cooked, and my stomach reacted violently to it. (I got cassia
>cramps after a long time.) I guess it was due to a language problem. I need to
>learn the Japanese phrase for "totally uncooked."

Nah. Raw just doesn't mean the same thing to most people as it does to a
raw fooder. A critical look at the stuff sold at as sashimi (supposedly raw
seafood, from a supermarket or sushi bar) is disheartening. The octopus is
almost always boiled. The mackerel is saba-ized". The pricey yellowtail is
farmed and thawed (but nearly irresistable--except for the price!). The
various clam meats are usually boiled. As are the shrimp. The roes are
salted and pasteurised. Uni (urchin roe!!) is usually thawed and suffers as
greatly as a strawberry does from being frozen. Any shrimp are usually
boiled. The squid, well, it may sometimes be raw, but who can stand squid
anyway ;). Even the daikon is often soaked in water to leech some of the
bitterness. Usually the safest bets are tuna, salmon, and red snapper--all
of which are sometimes frozen/thawed. Fortunately all three don't suffer
_terribly_ when thawed. When thawed they change, kina sorta, but at sashimi
prices most people will get the stop from their wallets before they do from
the fish. ;) The lowest blow of all though: the little logs of imitation
crab meat!!! And they still charge a couple bucks a bite for it <shiver>.
That's kinda like ordering a carrot juice with a grape kool-aide chaser,
isn't it? Or serving twinkies at a fu fu French restuarant...

And so what if it is thawed? We have eaten our share of sashimi (stretching
it out as the meal) in inevitably over-priced Japanese resturants, but it
makes a nice (high-brow) restaurant option if need be socially. Perhaps the
best thing about sashimi prices is that they encourage one to by their own
chunk of tuna and slice it, for a tiny fraction of the price as restuarant
sashimi.

Cheers,
Kirt