really, just a solid science blog: cocktail party physics.

the post that caught my eye, of course, was on the MMR-autism “link.” it’s worth a read (and a watch).

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maybe i’ll eventually get around to blogging about why i think the wyeth v. levine SCOTUS decision was right, even though the original outcome at trial was likely wrong.

one of the side effects of the wyeth decision has been the proliferation of doomsday cries from such venerable sources as the wall street journal and AEI asserting that the decision spells certain doom for the pharmaceutical industry. in addition to calling for explicit FDA preemption of state causes of action, some – like the manhattan institute – would like the feds to indemnify drug companies that adhere to the minimum FDA warning label requirements, and create a federal drug injury compensation program, similar to the national vaccine injury compensation program.

i think this is a horrible idea on a number of levels, and i’ll sketch out a few thoughts to flesh out later:

* the VICP was established after a series of personal injury lawsuits awarded high damages to plaintiffs and several manufacturers halted production of the vaccines in response to their high liability costs. this is similar on its face to the greater drug situation, post-wyeth, but until we see a flood of wyeth-inspired lawsuits, reports of big pharma’s demise are premature. companies aren’t going to stop developing new drugs just because case law has now clarified what the FDA had maintained for decades: that the post-market surveillance of drugs requires both regulation and litigation. (either that, or we need to seriously beef up the FDA’s budget and give it back its fangs – something i don’t see the “free-market” manhattan institute favoring.)

* drug companies don’t have a very good track record of self-policing once their products have been approved. (vioxx, anyone?) removing one of the few incentives to keep on top of new data (lawsuits) will further reduce the companies’ interest in assuring the safety of their products.

* vaccines protect the whole population against epidemic disease. the rest of the drug pantheon… well, while they do serve a social good, i don’t consider lifesaving – but ultimately individual-supporting – drugs to have the same social value. it’s the difference between funding a city sewer system and funding a program to install self-cleaning toilets in every home. (no telephone sanitizer jokes, please.)

* there are 23 vaccines covered by the VICP. in contrast, the physician’s desk reference lists more than 2,400 drugs.

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and on a completely unrelated note, kashi frozen dinners are really, really yummy. the one i’m currently noshing on – black bean mango – is a little high on the sodium (430 mg), but impressively flavorful and texturally varied. it’s also vegan. go figure.

i’m going to tell you about dinner at dino in a moment. but first: the hysterical awfulness of woo lae oak.

woo lae oak has – or perhaps had, at this point – a reputation as being the best upscale korean restaurant in the dc area. at least, this was the case with the pentagon city location, which appears to no longer exist. this cannot possibly be the case with the tysons corner location.

my parents, g and i went to woo lae oak on saturday night. g doesn’t particularly like korean food aside from a few dishes (his year in korea had the exact opposite effect on him, culinarily, as our year in korea did on the blood-family), so it was particularly kind of him to agree to woo lae oak, and on valentine’s day, and with my parents, no less.

we got there, and it was somewhat busy. a big chalkboard had “korean food and wine pairings” (a horrible concept, if you ask me) to commemorate the hallmark holiday, but that’s neither here nor there. the hostess informed us there was a half hour wait for the grill tables, but if we didn’t want one of those, we could be seated immediately. as we regularly have bulkogi and galbi at home, we weren’t set on a grill table. we opted for the latter.

boy, was that a mistake.

the hostess took us up to the second floor, which is either used for wedding banquets or conferences for the blind. the decor is vintage hotel ballroom – loud carpet, peach walls, folding room partitions. the front area of the second floor had apparently been reserved, so she guided us to a back room.

it must’ve been fifty degrees in there.

the seating consisted of big, round banquet tables – the plywood kind on folding legs that seat six to eight, depending on how crowded you want to be. we were four.

there was a window cutaway into one of the walls, which afforded the room a view of the men’s restroom.

did i mention it was freezing?

we asked the waitress to turn up the heat, which i assume she did, as the temperature slowly climbed. (she also brought us hot barley tea to offset the chill of the room. however, serving hot barley tea in wine glasses is… odd, to say the least – and rather difficult to drink.) unfortunately, the room had two doorways – one with a single solid panel door (a service entrance, i surmised); the other had a pair of french doors and led back through the main banquet room through which we’d entered. every time an employee went through the service door, leaving it open, a gale-force draft blew through the room, sending the temperature plummeting. this happened repeatedly during the evening, despite our requests to various employees to please make sure to close the service door behind them.

and then there were the kids. there were perhaps four occupied tables in the cavernous room, two of which had large contingents of children in the six-to-ten range. i imagine they, too, were cold. and they were certainly bored – a single waitress had the room, and service was as slow as sweet black bean paste. it took forever her to get around to taking everyone’s order, and then an eternity passed before the appetizers arrived. the kids were antsy, being kids – and they soon started chasing each other around the room. then around the room and through the service door. then around the room, through the service door, down the hall past the men’s room, and back in through the other door.

horrifically ugly, freezing room. children on the rampage. mediocre service. oh, yeah – and the food? well, it was okay, but nothing to write home about. g & i had the dolsot bibim bap (preceeded by gun man doo for g, and an overly-vegetable-laden jap jae for me); my parents had soup. the best part of the meal were the small side dishes – a variety of kimchi and other pickled vegetables. i think the food at the diner counter of the korean supermarket in wheaton is just as good, to tell you the truth.

i’ll post about dino tomorrow. quick synopsis: generally good food, although the Risotto Alla Novarese i ordered was inedibly salty, and spiked with near-mush cabbage, which was apparently the chef’s idea of “veggies.”

i’m having dinner at dino tonight with parents, brother & BIL. review likely to follow.¹ last time i ate there was during summer ‘08 restaurant week, and was gastronomically impressed. in august we sat on the patio, though – i don’t think that will be happening today.²

oh – and maybe i’ll blog about the great beignet experiment of 2009. it’s funny how once you’ve acquired a deep fryer, everything starts to look like batter…
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¹ this is as much to remind me i’m having dinner out tonight as to remind me to write a review. life has been not-calm lately, although not nearly as hectic as alejna’s is sounding. without written reminders, i’m likely to forget to eat at all, never mind meeting family at a restaurant.

² that link will expire, of course, at least as it pertains to today’s weather. if you’re randomly interested in the weather at my work zip in the future, by all means, go ahead and click on it. in the future, that is.

saturday night, g and i went to the russia house to celebrate a friend’s 47th birthday with champagne and caviar. we’d never been there before, and g doesn’t care much for the fish eggs, but the company was good so we happily made the trek across the river.

contrary to the assurances of whoever answered the phone at the russia house, there’s no good parking anywhere near it on a saturday night. i knew this, having worked near there in a former life, but figured the anonymous voice on the phone knew of what he spoke. he didn’t. we parked on s, a goodly hike from the bar, and i gamely high-heeled it up and down the hills.

anywhere that serves as much vodka as the russia house shouldn’t have so many steps up to its front door. i’m just saying.

our party was seated in the bar area immediately to the left of the front door as we entered, and i didn’t venture any further into the place during the ~2 hours we were there. i didn’t pay too much attention to the other patrons, either, as it had been awhile since i’d seen our friends, and my attention didn’t stray until the arrival of a group of women that included a screechy blonde whose voice sounded like nails on a chalkboard. and even then, the distraction was short-lived. from what i saw, the clientele was a bit too trendy for my tastes – i’m a dive bar girl at heart – but i didn’t mind, as it had no bearing on our reason for celebrating.

the champagne was good. the caviar was good, too – although the sevruga was a bit past its prime, and the roe a bit mushy. i generally prefer sevruga to osetra, flavor-wise, but the osetra was the better batch. i think we also had the american sturgeon toward the end of the evening, but i was tipsy enough that it was probably wasted on me. (at this point, i should admit that i’m a caviar junkie. family lore has me glomming down the shimmering black stuff at a reception circa age 3, much to everyone’s surprise. and when my mother was working on a project in kiev in the 90s, she’d bring back huge tins of caviar – easily 4x the size of the servings at the russia house – and make blini for the family. heaven.) which reminds me – the russia house’s blini was acceptable – a bit on the chewy side, and made with less buckwheat than it should’ve been.

to supplement the champagne, i ordered a russian standard on the rocks. russian standard’s about the only vodka i can drink – g and i picked up a few bottles when we were in st. petersburg several years ago (it was cheaper than water, literally), and it was able to overcome the vodka aversion i developed at age 16 after getting too drunk on screwdrivers and hurling onion rings. we also picked up a bottle of russian standard platinum somewhere along the way – i think it may have been a gift from my friend andrej – and it was even better. but i digress.

i’m usually a gin drinker, though, and one of our companions asked if i liked hendrick’s. after learning i’d never tasted it (i generally haven’t bothered to venture beyond my standard bombay saffire sapphire) , he ordered me a hendrick’s on the rocks. the waiter (who, i should mention, was attentive, informative, funny, and unobtrusive) apologized for not having a cucumber garnish, which confused me until the first sip. while juniper was still the primary flavor, there was a lot of other green stuff going on. after two or three sips, though, i had to put it aside – too much alcohol after the champagne and vodka. i may try it in a gin & tonic at a later date.

i hadn’t had dinner, and it would’ve been rude to hog the caviar, so i ordered the cured meat plate. at $12 it was a decent appetizer, with a curiously mild black bread (catering to american tastes? i was expecting a dense pumpernickel) and some tasty salami and ham slices. i also split the wild game sausage sampler – wild boar, venison, and rabbit, according to the menu. they were all a bit on the greasy side, made bearable by the mustard, and the venison was probably the most flavorful of the three. (i tend to doubt the rabbit sausage was made from wild rabbits – wild hare isn’t fatty, and the sausage was.)

the upshot of my experience: none of the food was nearly as good as it should have been – i have to wonder if the strong flavors have been softened for a less-tolerant american palate. but food wasn’t our reason for going out, and i didn’t really think about it much until the next day. the service was great, the company was wonderful, and the hour or so at jimmy valentine’s afterwards (now there’s a bar that’s my speed, on nights they’re not spinning thump-ss-thump techno, anyway) a ton of fun. good times.

a) the source; or b) charlie palmer steak.

the answer is b.

i took the office crew out for the holiday lunch today (their choice). usually our grown-up office lunches are amazing – when i signed on at current health policy job, my then-boss took us to equinox; i had what can only be described as the most amazing dainty burger on the planet. when my counterpart on the education policy side of the shop left, we did her despedida at heritage india; while i’m not a huge indian food fan, i have to say it was delicious. so i was looking forward to a similarly wondrous gastronomic experience.

i did not find such an experience at the source.

for starters, the din in the restaurant was deafening. conversation bounced off the hard surfaces, buzzed at the randomly-placed glass panels, and rattled the ears. on top of this, at some point during our lunch, the restaurant began piping in music. bad music. awful music, actually.

we were seated upstairs, next to the bathrooms. not a good choice. four people to a booth that really only comfortably sits two (and none of us are large, by the way). the waiter was pleasant enough, if not animated; his suggestions were acceptable.

the food was good, but not great. the appetizers were definitely more appealing than the main dishes; my roast suckling pig squares were topped with perfectly crackled skin and a slightly bitter green sprouty counterpoint. my maine lobster club sandwich would’ve been much better deconstructed. granted, i’m probably an idiot for ordering a lobster club – who eats a two-tiered sandwich in a restaurant, anyway – but none of the other dishes appealed to me. too much with the fish and chicken. so anyway: perfectly cooked lobster meat, undercrisped bacon (and how difficult is it to make crispy bacon? i’ve had a fabulous BLT in a hole-in-the-wall in laramie, wy, fercryinoutloud), generous slices of ripe tomato, an appropriate smear of mayo. all on some very good cranberry wheat bread. (oddly, this all looks much better on my monitor than it did on the plate. perhaps it was the pile of unevenly-cooked french fries.) after contemplating it for a moment, i separated the sandwich components, ate the lobster (which is what i was really after, anyway), crunched some of the bread, poked unhappily at the bacon, and halfheartedly dunked a few overcooked fries in ketchup.

all in all, a less than stellar meal.

now, about two weeks ago, g took me to charlie palmer for my birthday. it may just be that i’m a red meat kind of gal (or that the company makes the meal), but in looking back to my perfectly-seared duck foie gras appetizer and the 21-days-aged filet mignon tender enough to cut with a sharp glance, there’s really no comparison. the staff was attentive but not intrusive, the host was charming and accommodating (taking us up to the balcony for a view of the capitol after our meal; we descended by a different elevator so as not to disturb a young couple who had just gotten engaged – now that’s attention to detail), the noise level in the restaurant, minimal – and this with a table of large, rapidly inebriating men less than fifteen feet away. i don’t remember my dessert, but i’m willing to bet it was spectacular.

perhaps for the next office lunch we’ll try corduroy. i’ll try to remember to tell you how it goes.

warren brown explains why cakelove keeps the cupcakes in the fridge.

(and i write the post title with a giggle in my heart and nothing but admiration for warren.)

this is the first in an occasional series where i review prepackaged, ready-to-eat “food” that is marketed to the office set as a lunchtime option. ratings are out of five desks (because that’s where i’m likely to eat it). more desks are better.

product: ronzoni bistro penne with chicken & broccoli.

the claim: “a delicious combination of penne with white chicken meat and broccoli in a light rosemary and garlic cream sauce.”

background: lured in by spiffy television advertising promising a luscious pasta meal, i picked up a single pouch of the vile concoction at the commissary yesterday. figured it couldn’t be as bad as some other nuked meals i’ve sampled. i was wrong. so very, very wrong.

overall rating: half a desk. (note to self: i should make an icon for that.) this stuff is disgusting. i’ve deleted several sentences multiple times in which i tried to explain just how nasty this stuff is. i can’t. trust me: you don’t want this anywhere near your mouth.

ease of preparation: four desks. i’d give it a five, but i was initially wary that the food pack would fall down during microwave rotation, spewing boiling hot alfredo sauce through the vent you rip in the top of the pouch. didn’t happen, which was good, because cleaning this out of the microwave would’ve sucked.

appearance: two desks. squished out of the pouch, it didn’t look all that bad. a bit on the sticky side, perhaps. but then i noticed i couldn’t distinguish between the pieces of chicken and the penne – the sauce was that gummy. it had flecks of things that may or may not have been herbs and seasonings. (from the ingredients: dehydrated vegetables – garlic, onion, red bell pepper, parsley.)

odor: one desk. “smells like barbecue sauce” according to a colleague. i’m at a loss to describe it, myself. week-old pizza and wallpaper glue, maybe.

texture: zero desks. stringy chicken, no broccoli of note, mushy penne. the sauce was the consistency of elmer’s glue. as it cooled, it congealed even further.

flavor: half a desk. it had a flavor. i desperately wish it hadn’t. somewhat reminiscent of dusty oregano mixed with… something really nasty. wallpaper paste comes to mind, if you were to make it with, well, the most disgusting stuff you could come up with, provided it was of the general white color. with salt. lots of it – a serving (one pouch) packs a walloping 820mg of sodium – 34% of your RDA.

quantity: two desks. it’s on the skimpy side for a lunch portion. (210 calories, if that means anything to anyone.) in this case, that was a blessing – any more, and i doubt i could’ve choked it down. also, i’m still hungry enough that i may go buy a second lunch downstairs at jack’s fresh. in addition to satisfying my hunger, it will also help get the disgusting taste out of my mouth.

the right side of my face is numb from my cheekbone to my jawline, courtesy of my dentist who did some drilling this morning. consequently, i’ve got nothing much of interest for the blog today. so i’ll share two things.

1. beautiful photos of the decay of an abandoned railway station in abkhazia. the railway station – which appears to be nestled between the ocean and a small mountain range – looks like it was stunning while it was still in use; now the encroachment of nature gives it a vaguely logan’s run feel. (hat tip: bryan)

2. the omnivore’s 100, originally posted here, coming to bc4 via collecting tokens.

Here’s the deal:

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

The Omnivore’s Hundred:

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp (an unfortunately bony fish)
9. Borscht (best ever: in a casino on a sunday in st. petersburg, when nothing else was open)
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart (mmm. garbage dogs. sometimes it’s what you need.)
16. Epoisses (i’m assuming this refers to the cheese, not the place)
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream (once. never, ever again.)
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras (probably my favorite politically incorrect foodstuff of all time)
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn or Head Cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam Chowder in Sourdough Bowl
33. Salted Lassi
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted Cream Tea
38. Vodka Jelly/Jell-O (jello shots, eh?)
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects (and it wasn’t on purpose. eew.)
43. Phaal (er… maybe?)
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth $120 or more
46. Fugu (aka pufferfish)
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel (in elementary school i’d gross out my classmates when i brought smoked eel to school for lunch. you just peel ‘em like a banana.)
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin (i wouldn’t recommend it. it’s like chewing on wet, iodine-soaked toilet paper.)
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle (i still have a recipe for spaetzle tacked up on a kitchen cabinet from the last time i made it.)
57. Dirty gin martini (is there any other kind?)
58. Beer above 8% ABV (delirium tremens. yum.)
59. Poutine (i haven’t had this, but after looking it up, i want to!)
60. Carob chips (quite possibly the worst culinary fraud ever perpetrated on a child.)
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs (all those poor little frogs on crutches…)
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake (there’s a place in alexandria that makes good beignets; i make churros occasionally; and i had an elephant ear yesterday and a funnel cake not more than a month ago. i love me some fried pastry.)
68. Haggis (when in scotland…)
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snails
79. Lapsang Souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom Yum
82. Eggs Benedict
83. Pocky (a box of them is sitting on my desk)
84. 3 Michelin Star Tasting Menu
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare (does domestic rabbit count?)
87. Goulash
88. Flowers (nasturtiums are particularly tasty – peppery and sweet, if picked when the nectar is still wet.)
89. Horse (i won’t say never, but damn, those french are strange.)
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam (you can’t live on guam and avoid it for long)
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose Harissa (i’m claiming yes, although it’s really a “probably.”)
94. Catfish (a smoked lunchbox addition when we ran out of eel.)
95. Mole Poblano
96. Bagel and Lox
97. Lobster Thermidor (waste of perfectly good lobster)
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee
100. Snake

this seems like a fairly narrow selection of foods, but that might be due to my ethnic background and having been dragged around the world, from pillar to post, as a child.

alejna also added these, for geographical variety:

101. poi
102. kimchi
103. vegemite
104. guaraná

and i would add

105. balut (for the sheer gross-out factor)
106. lumpia (a guam favorite)
107. kelleguin
108. anticuchos de corazón
109. knedlik
110. svíčková
111. pajsl (with beef heart, rather than lung)

- the real, italian stuff – is amazing. the american version, produced by the wisconsin-based cheesery bel gioioso, is mostly an “eh”: nice enough mozzarella, but nothing to write home about.

it’s as though someone explained to bel gioioso what burrata is, without letting them taste it. so then they made it… and completely missed the boat. it is, in fact, what a nutrimatic dispenser would give you if you simply asked for burrata: a globe of white cheese in water that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea burrata.

so, no more schlepping out to wegmans for a fix. if they don’t have it at the italian store, i’ll have to do without. because a caprese salad made with burrata… omfg. it doesn’t get any better than that.

i’ve had many cakes from cakelove over the years, as a dc resident and former classmate of warren brown’s. and i’ve enjoyed most of them. so i wasn’t worried when i ordered the raz-ma-tazz (“my downfall” with raspberry buttercream between the layers) for a colleague’s birthday.

first, the good things: the buttercream is raspberry-iffic, a perfect medley of sweet and tart. the chocolate ganache melts in your mouth. the cake itself, still whole, was a pretty little thing (i ordered the 6″, serves 4-8): gentle swirls of ganache and a trio of fresh raspberries in a cluster near the edge.

we cut the cake, room-temperature (as recommended by cakelove), and served it with ice cream. and it was a good thing we did: the actual cake was heavy, dense… and dry. it also isn’t very chocolatey. in fact, when i had a small slice, solo, the next day, it was downright disappointing.

if i had my druthers, i’d probably soak the layers with a simple syrup before assembling the cake. it would improve both the texture and the flavor, as well as adding a little to the shelf life (not that it needs it – as it was, there was almost nothing left of the cake in 24 hours).

overall quality of cake: B-
quality for price: C