It does taste like chicken!

For some unknown reason, DayJob, Inc. served crocodile stew in the cafeteria today, and the server was kind enough to let me have a taste before committing to an entrée.

It really does taste like chicken. I don't know about "just" like, though--I thought there was a distinctive difference, but couldn't pin it down--aroma? texture? It was distinct enough and not to my liking enough that I decided to give it a pass.

Of course, the test was fundamentally flawed, though--no control group and no blinding. Someday I'll have to sample chicken and crocodile, not knowing which similarly-prepared sample is which, to get a real data point.

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Autumn brunch

So I've been spending quite a bit of weekend time at the house of the PI for the bear reproductive biology project, working on potential publications, and it's a nice place to work--a right place for right livelihood.

We've had some nice brunches before and during the writing sessions. I stopped by the store to get some fresh vegetables on the way, and the atmosphere is very autumnal:



I couldn't decide whether I liked that tomato in the bottom right of the frame, but I certainly noticed it--it looked like the movie Alien if Veggie Tales had produced (ha!) it:



It did say something to me, although I'm not sure quite what; in the end, I decided to go a different route. I already had blueberries and Italian plums that Emma had invited me to pick in her garden; noticing an unfamiliar fruit--a tamarillo from New Zealand--I decided to get one to try at brunch:



In the end, it was a good thing that I only got one--not sure what she experienced it as, but to me, it tasted like kiwi meets tomato meets mango meets soap. We finished all the other fruit, but not the tamarillo.

Fortunately, she knows some gorillas who love all kinds of fruit, so it turned out not to be wasted.

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