Waiter, my salad tastes like shit!

[snousle]

John has just returned from the 14-C conference in Paris with some amusing tales.

He tells me that while dining at Gaspard de la Nuit, he had a delicious salad that was dressed with huille d'argan. I'd never heard of it before, and turns out to be a Moroccan product historically made from goat shit. This is not so different from that fancypants cat shit coffee you've read about. (Heh, that sounds like a figure of speech, but it's not)

Alas, it is likely that the argan seeds used for this oil were harvested directly from the tree, without the traditional goat-based processing. But John says it was delicious nonetheless, so good he went back to the same restaurant the next night to have it again.

It's refreshing to know that there are still amazing things in the world I've never even heard of.

Comments

[dhpbear.livejournal.com]

"Waiter.... there are snails on her plate!"

goat poop soup

[chefxh.livejournal.com]

Huile d'argan, tu l'as appellé? Je n'en sais rien. (Kevin says he won't eat oil pressed from the shitseeds of goats over 16 cm tall. "They have to be pygmy pygmy goats.")

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

Radio Carbon eh?

John is going crazy for neolithic shizzle atm so it's dating this and remnant that atm...he was most excited about that dating of (some) cave paintings - depending on what was used in the paint, of course...

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

Oh reading the wikipedia after how the argan oil was traditionally made - this innocent sentence then takes on a new light:

"The vast majority of the production of argan oil passes through the women's cooperative of argan oil. "

umm....

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Did you know that my partner is one of the grand old men of the whole 14C dating field? He figured out the chemistry that reliably turns samples into graphite so that it can be put into an AMS ion source. I got my own start in software development by writing the data acquisition system for the Livermore AMS instrument, and over the past 20 years a substantial fraction of all the radiocarbon dates that have been measured have been processed using the software I wrote.

[fingertrouble.livejournal.com]

No I didn't - although I suspect you mentioned radio carbon a long while ago. Very cool :-D I'll mention it to John...he's currently in his 'read everything that was ever written about it and visit the sites in UK stage'.

I'm not joking, once he digs (hoho) something he just goes and researches it like crazy, joins historical groups etc...well he is an academic. It was tapestries for several years, then greek pots...I assume they just run all parallel now.

[theotherqpc.livejournal.com]

if i'm not mistaken, the natural foods store next door to us carries argan oil, should you want to pick up a bottle.

[snousle.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, there is an extremely high chance it is counterfeit.

Did you read the recent article about how something like 16 out of 20 major EVOO brands were shown to be adulterated?

[theotherqpc.livejournal.com]

ah yes. not terribly surprised.