I wrote a long rant about Scoble’s latest whine, but when I proofread it, I couldn’t imagine that anyone cares. Shortly after, I had a phonecall from my mom, and like we do when we don’t have much to talk about, we ended up talking about recipes. Apparently my sister had been making some pickles, and we ended up talking about them.

Pickles aren’t a very glamourous food. The seem kind of yesterday, don’t they? The kind of thing that your grandma might place out during Thanksgiving meals, but you don’t really think about them much probably. There is probably a fairly good reason for that: most pickles you buy in the store simply suck. They have an overcooked, oversalted, oversweet (if sweet) or rancid (dill) flavor that just isn’t very pleasant.

But I have memories of different pickles than that. In particular the garlic kosher dill pickles and the “bread and butter” pickles that my grandma used to lay down. I haven’t tread into the kosher dill arena yet, but I have made entirely delicious bread and butter pickles, which are simple and can be done in small batches whenever you want ’em. Even if you aren’t a pickle fan, try dicing some of these into a tuna fish salad sometime, and you will turn up your nose at your standard supermarket variety.

I don’t have grandma’s recipe, but I tried Alton Brown’s B & B recipe, and they are dead easy to make, require no special techniques or equipment, and are just darned yummy.

The folks in the Mediterrainian have a different spin on the cucumber, often combing it with garlic, olive oil and yogurt. I didn’t know what they called it (tsasiki) but no matter how you spell it, with a combination of ingredients like that, it just can’t be bad. In a strange harmony of coincidence, Cooking for Engineers had a nice recipe (again, the kind of thing that your grandma would cook for you).

Cooking For Engineers – Recipe File: Anghelika’s Tsatsiki (Tzatziki)

Other ways I like cucumbers? How ’bout with some sprouts (or maybe watercress) and some cream cheese on a sandwich with a glass of ice tea on a hot summer day? Or in a spicy gazpacho? My grandma (and mom) make a salad by brining onions and cucumbers overnight, then draining and rinsing them, and making a dressing from mayo and a little vinegar. Brining them overnight removes some of the bitterness, and I really like the creamy onion/cucumber combo. Instead of mayo, you could probably use yogurt. Maybe with some fresh dill, that would be tasty.

I’m gonna add some ingredients to my shopping list for the farmer’s market this weekend.

[tags]Pickles,Cucumbers,Food,Recipes[/tags]

As someone might know, I’m a big fan of Nintendo. I never had the old NES, but I’ve had at least one of every game system Nintendo has shipped since then, and really like a lot of their games. It is with some interest then that I am watching the developments surrounding the Wii: Nintendo’s next generation console. For one thing, it was rumored that they would ship it at a pricepoint signficantly lower than the Xbox 360 or the planned price for the PS-3. I think it is important for game manufacturers to remember that they are making game machines. The enjoyment you get out of a game is to some degree correlated to the number of pixels you see on the screen, but only loosely. Nintendo seems to see that. Instead of bragging about how fast their processor is, they are talking about their release titles. Instead of telling you how big their hard drive is, or how many pixels it can draw, they are demoing a new, innovative controller. Oh, and it will come out at a far more reasonable $250 price point (I was hoping for $199, but you can’t always get everything you want). Still, you get a nifty game console for what the PSP costs. Neat.

Anyway, Engadget has coverage of their press conference this morning. They release on Nov. 19. They expect to ship sell four million units before the end of the year. That’s a billion dollars worth of product. Zelda will be available at launch (and consequently, will be my Christmas present from my wife, assuming I can wait that long). They seem to have the Internet/Wifi/broadband in mind, with Wii Channels to allow their users to interact, and even buy copies of old legacy games for reasonable prices ($5 for old NES games, $8 for NES games). Seems to use SD cards for storage (which I think is an excellent move, I think rotating storage for a game machine has become silly with dropping flash prices). No subscription costs for Nintendo Internet services. They support widescreen on all their first party apps.

Read more from Engadget: Live at Nintendo’s NYC Wii press conference – Engadget

[tags]Nintendo,Nintendo Wii,Video Games[/tags]