West Meets East: Cucumber Salad Recipes

Back in December, I attended a holiday party with some former colleagues. It was a potluck, and I brought my Tangy Fruit Relish and pressgurka, a Swedish cucumber salad that has been traditional in our family since before I was born.

So imagine my surprise when someone at the party said his Mother made a very similar dish--except it was Chinese!

Several days later, he e-mailed me two links to recipes that are similar to his Mother's. I hadn't gotten around to trying it until recently. The addition of soy sauce and sesame oil makes it quite different from my family recipe, but it has the same essential characteristics: cucumbers in a slightly sweet, slightly acidic dressing that is cool, crisp and refreshing. Indeed, while I think the pressgurka dressing has little application except cucumbers, I tried drizzling some of the Chinese version over lettuce and a few chopped veggies (carrots, red onion, green pepper--some peapods would have been excellent) and it made a very nice Asian-style salad dressing on its own.

These are the two Chinese versions. I used the second one, but did not cook the cucumbers, as I like them raw and crisp. They do soften a little after marinating in the dressing for a couple of days, but the flavor is well worth it!

http://chinesefood.about.com/od/vegetablesrecipes/r/cucumbersalad.htm

http://chinesefood.about.com/od/soupsaladvegetables/tp/cucumber_salad.htm

And here is the recipe for Pressgurka:

Wash and peel a large cucumber. Score the cucumber by pulling the tines of a fork lengthwise along cucumber. (This is wonderfully refreshing in Summer--you get a gentle spray. It's purely ornamental, so can be omitted.)

Cut the cucumber into very thin slices and put into a shallow bowl.

Mix together:
1/3 cup cider vinegar
5 tablespoons water
5 tablespoons sugar
½ teaspoon salt
dash of pepper (use white pepper if you don't want dark specks in the dressing)

Pour dressing over the cucumber slices and toss lightly to coat evenly. Cover and put in the refrigerator for several hours to chill and allow flavors to blend.

Garnish cucumbers with 1 tablespoon finely chopped parsley.

Happy Anniversary, NWS!

Quick, name your favorite government agency.

What, did nothing come immediately to mind?

I have a hands-down favorite--one that I check in with (via their website) nearly every day. It's the National Weather Service or, as they were originally known, the Division of Telegrams and Reports for the Benefit of Commerce. Today is their anniversary and Wired has an article about them.

This is an agency so scrupulously honest that I've seen the forecast page for my area predict a daily high of, say 45, while farther down the screen showing a current temperature of 47. How many people do you know anywhere who are that truthful about their errors?

Feb. 9, 1870: Feds Get on Top of the Weather

Congress thought the nation needed a centralized weather office, and that the new system would be best served by military precision and discipline. Hence, the resolution signed by President Grant in 1870 required the Secretary of War:

to provide for taking meteorological observations at the military stations in the interior of the continent and at other points in the States and Territories ... and for giving notice on the northern [Great] Lakes and on the seacoast by magnetic telegraph and marine signals, of the approach and force of storms.

The War Department assigned the new function to the Signal Service Corps, where Brig. Gen. Albert J. Myer matter-of-factly named the new unit the Division of Telegrams and Reports for the Benefit of Commerce.

The network went online Nov. 1, 1870. Observers at 24 stations in the eastern United States started taking synchronized readings at 7:35 a.m. and telegraphing them to the division's headquarters in Washington, D.C.

An interesting tidbit, if these sorts of things interest you, is that my local NWS office posts hourly temperature and weather stats at 9 minutes before the hour. Why 9 minutes? I once e-mailed the NWS and the answer is that, back in telegraph days, local stations would take readings a few minutes before the hour so that they would be received at the headquarters on the hour. Nine minutes seemed to do the trick, and it has stuck, although now everything is done via computers and is nearly instantaneous.

Wired: OLPC's Hidden Killer App

I got a smile reading this article on Wired. Apparently the rest of the world is realizing that the XO laptop can be used as a light-weight (and cute) e-book reader.

OLPC's Hidden Killer App: Ultimate E-Book Reader

As the One Laptop Per Child project scrambles to revitalize itself, ... it could find the footing it needs to survive by playing to its product's hidden strength as a low-priced, take-it-anywhere e-book reader.

The OLPC's XO Children's Machine is still a little clunky around the edges, and the availability of free, modern e-books is slim. But several open source projects are emerging that promise to improve the XO's capability as an e-book reader.

Once the kinks around software and content are ironed out, the XO could be pitched to commuters, students and travelers as a purely consumer device — "it's the rugged Kindle!" — the OLPC project can generate much-needed revenue to fund its educational, open-hardware goals.

"It is a great e-book," says Walter Bender, former president of OLPC software and content...

NASA's Day of Remembrance

Every year, during the last week of January, NASA remembers the astronauts who perished in their three catastrophic accidents: Apollo 1, Challenger and Columbia. The first two disasters occurred in late January; Columbia on February 1.

There is not much I could add to NASA's excellent online memorial. I will simply quote an e-mail I wrote on February 3, 2003, two days after the Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated during re-entry:

So now we've lost Columbia, and I feel like an old friend has died. This certainly wasn't like the World Trade Center disaster. For days after September 11, I would lie in bed after I woke up and explain to myself again that it was true. It was almost a month before I cried, and there are still times when I look at the empty space where the Twin Towers used to be and wonder how two huge buildings and all the people in them could just vanish in such a short time......

No, there was no disbelief this time. Space travel is risky. As soon as I heard what had happened, I knew it was gone. By the time President Bush made his speech, I was in tears. And then listening to poor Ron Dittemore reciting times and temperatures and telemetry, while his voice cracked... It was just sad.

Geek To Live: Turn Thunderbird into the Ultimate Gmail IMAP Client

A few months ago I changed my Gmail settings on Thunderbird from POP to IMAP. (If you don't understand any of that, feel free to jump to the next post....) LifeHacker had a good article on setting up the IMAP, and it worked perfectly.

After using it for a while, I wonder how I got along without it. Now when I make changes to my Gmail account (such as label, archive or delete a message) it is changed in both Thunderbird and the web version of Gmail. And I've discovered that some tasks are much easier in one, others in the other. For example, moving messages to folders using Thunderbird's drag & drop is simpler, but archiving messages in bunches is easier in the web version.

If you've read this far without being confused, check out the LifeHacker how-to.

Geek To Live: Turn Thunderbird into the Ultimate Gmail IMAP Client

Gmail's IMAP support roll-out this week had nerds all atwitter about the possibility of synchronized email access across devices, computers, and clients. IMAP is far superior to regular old POP for fetching your messages and maintaining your folder list whether you're on your iPhone, office or home computer. If IMAP's got you curious but you're not sure what desktop application to use with Gmail, consider the extensible, fast, cross-platform and free Mozilla Thunderbird, our beloved Firefox's little sibling. Here's how to get the full Gmail experience in Thunderbird with IMAP.

What's IMAP?

Internet Message Access Protocol enables email programs to read messages stored on the server. Unlike POP, with IMAP it's as if you're browsing a network drive of files on a remote server with an open, live connection to that server; whenever you open a folder or view a message, it's displayed from that server live. IMAP maintains a constant connection with your server and updates real-time."