Recipe for Sour Cucumber

Here is a recipe for sour cucumber, which is actually my grandmother's. It's easy.

The ingredients are: one cucumber, half an onion, and vinegar to taste. My grandmother adds a little bit of sugar, I don't. You'll also need a jar to put the finished product in. I use a salsa jar and a peanut butter jar, but you can also use tupperware.

1. Peel the cucumber and slice it thinly.
2. Peel the outer layers off the onion (I presume you start with a whole onion), and cut off the ends. Slice the onion in half, and then cut it lengthwise and cross-wise.
3. Put the cucumber and onion into the jar, and fill it about 1/8 of the way up with vinegar.
4. Fill the rest of the jar with tap water.
5. Seal the jar tightly and shake it to mix the water and vinegar together.
6. Taste the water/vinegar mixture and see if you think it is sour enough. If it is, reseal it and put it in the refrigerator and leave it there for a day. If not, add more vinegar (or if it is too sour add water), seal it and shake it again and taste it.

Maple Leaf Cookies

I was at Deal$ yesterday (the dollar/discount store near OfficeMax) and discovered, much to my surprise, that they were selling maple creme cookies (sandwich cookies with creme inside that is made in part from maple syrup). Normally you can only buy these in Canada, so I was pleased to see them here. I bought one package, even though the cookies are absolutely horrible for me, they have 100 calories for each cookie, plus a lot of fat. I'm limiting myself to two cookies per day.

Fate and the Music I Listen To

The other day I realized that a lot of the music I have in my collection is not the result of listening to it on mainstream radio. Instead, it is dependent on fate and also my listening to music that was not on
I'm sure that I would have encountered Irish music even had I not gone to Newfoundland in 1997, and had my brother Thomas not found a CD of Newfoundland music. However, I don't think that I would have approached it in the same way or gotten CDs of the same bands that I have today.
I have a CD by a Quebecois band, Mes Aieux, which I discovered entirely by chance.
We were in Quebec City, and it just so happened that they were playing at a festival in a park, and I liked their music (even though I did not understand the words) and when I got back home, ordered a CD by them. I can't really describe their music, other than to say that it might be a cross between old Quebecois music and modern pop music, but that's not really doing it justice.
I have other music that I encountered through non-mainstream radio, like either an Australian Country Music station or a folk show I listen to on the BBC, for example. The only problem with non-mainstream music is that sometimes I have to order the music from overseas, which ends up being somewhat more expensive, especially because of the shipping.