Happy Girl Kitchen, Bread ‘n Butter

These are the bread and butter style pickles from Happy Girl Kitchen.   They are pretty tasty, with a nice sweetness.  Lots of sweet onion in there.   Overall, they are good.  I like what Happy Girl Kitchen has going on, and I like visiting their store.  They serve some good vegetarian food, with a …

Claude Shannon & Theseus the Artificial Mouse, Dawn of Machine Learning

I found this great video featuring Claude Shannon, and his artificial mouse Theseus, named for the Greek hero who slayed the Minotaur in the Labyrinth, one of the earliest examples of machine learning. http://techchannel.att.com/play-video.cfm/2010/3/16/In-Their-Own-Words-Claude-Shannon-Demonstrates-Machine-Learning The mouse is able to learn how to solve the maze.  Apparently, Shannon started getting involved down this track of making …

Paparazzi Protection, Snapchat IRL

Suppose that you're out having a wild time in Vegas and don't want to end up in anyone's pictures.  There is now a device for that.  I couldn't find anything more than the Fast Company brief overview, but the basic idea is that the device detects the infrared used by cameras (often used for range …

Yelp Reviews vs Michelin Reviews

There is a nice analysis at FiveThirtyEight by Nate Silver which looked at how Michelin reviews restaurants compared to how Yelp does.  They were able to look at the restaurants which have or had a Michelin star in the past few years.  Do Yelp reviews predict whether a restaurant will lose a star?  Which restaurant …

Bubbies and Golchin, Bread and Butter vs Giardiniera

Today I'm going to talk about two very different pickles.   The first are the Bread and Butter chips from Bubbies.   Basically, I thought these were absolutely delicious.  They had a light sweetness, not too cloying, with some nice crunch and mouthfeel.  You can tell by the picture that I rapidly finished off the …

Sonoma Brinery Kosher Dills and Ozuké Citrus Kraut

So today, I'm going to review a couple of fermented pickles from some small production companies.  Sonoma Brinery is located, surprisingly enough, in Sonoma County in Healdsburg.   Healdsburg is a lovely town with lots of vineyards and wineries around.  Their "Manhattan style" kosher dills are a nice, crunchy fermented dill.  I'm not sure it …

Yokohama Iekei Ramen, Union City, CA

Yokohama Iekei Ramen in Union City, CA was the very tasty destination today.  It's located in a shopping plaza along Alvarado Blvd with an eclectic mix of other shops.  There is a Filipino pork restaurant, a Chinese Calamari restaurant, a South Asian grocery market, and a bunch of other interesting shops including physician's office all …

Adventures in Architecture, Book Reviews

On a recent trip to New England, I was struck with how beautiful some of the historic buildings there are, particularly compared to many of the "McMansions" I see around the West Coast.  So I started looking into architecture a bit.  I took a few flights recently, so had plenty of time to get some …

Bread from a Can

One of the major New England food traditions is baked beans.  Boston is known as Beantown, and a key part of small town life in Maine are "Bean Suppers", often held in church basements or the like.  One of the common food items that goes with these baked beans is a steamed brown bread.  Traditionally …

New England Pickles

One of the nice things about being in New England  in the summertime is the abundance of nice farm stands.  It was also nice to see that the supermarkets had some relatively local fresh pickles for sale.  So I'm showing one of each type here.  The Kosher dills are from Farm Ridge Foods in NY, …