Best condiment ever - pickled red onions · Monday April 6, 2026 by colin newell
We have been embracing the Mediterranean diet lately… what is that you say?
The Mediterranean diet is a heart-healthy eating pattern modeled on the traditional cuisines of Greece, Spain, and Italy. It emphasizes plant-based foods (vegetables, fruits, whole grains, nuts, legumes), healthy fats like olive oil, and regular consumption of fish. It limits red meat, added sugars, and processed foods, reducing risks of cardiovascular disease and supporting overall health.
So – who wouldn’t want that? So far we have found most of the dishes that we have cooked up to be mega-yummy…
… And that is yummy to the power of 6… for your math types.
This Spring and Summer we will be featuring lots of recipes and combos with this dietary approach.
Let’s start with one of our favorite condiments… Pickled Red Onions.
Make thy brine
- 1/4 cup distilled white vinegar
- 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1/2 cup water
- 1/2 tablespoons maple syrup or honey
- 1/2 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/4 teaspoon red pepper flakes or 1/2 teaspoon peppercorns or…
Mix this slurry together – you can sub in a wide variety of spices in lieu of pepper, pepper flakes, peppercorns…
consider rosemary, thyme, oregano… Better yet, make multiple batches and experiment to your hearts content.
Grab a red onion…
There are a variety of ways to slice up an onion — and I am not going to tell you that there is a right way or wrong way…
Suffice to say: Slice it up into 1/8” slices. And be careful!
Stuff as much of these onion slices into a 1 pint mason jar.
Pour as much of your brine as you need to just cover the onions — hopefully the onion slices top out at around 1/2” below the top of the mason jar. Ideally, the brine covers the onion slices.
Cover or cap the mason jar – stick it in the fridge for a minimum of 24 Hours – it will last for over 6 months… but trust me, you’ll use this condiment up quickly — and make more! You can put pickled onions on hot dogs, salads, sandwiches, hamburgers, in salads… and yes, as part of the sensible Mediterranean diet!Colin Newell is a Victoria resident and subject expert within the realm of coffee culture… his website is Canada’s original tome on the resource of home and office coffee…
The Fermi Paradox - a casual look at why we are alone · Sunday March 15, 2026 by colin newell
The Fermi Paradox – I’ve have never written about it. Maybe the time has come. See what I did there?
The Fermi Paradox: sometimes pitched as “where are they?” – It is a question about the apparent lack of intelligent detected alien life in the universe.
The universe is very old relative to the speed of light so Light has been able to traverse our galaxy a thousand times since the ancient reptiles died out, and since radio waves travel at the speed of light (give or take…) too – why haven’t we heard anything?
I have some ideas on the subject…
We’re not looking very carefully.
We are a speck surrounded by the vast reaches of space – which stretches out almost infinitely in every direction – not quite “infinite” (as a subscriber of the big pa-boom theory…) we can only focus our attention on very minute segments of “the big out there…”
And living in the era of Tik-tok and the one minute Chinese internet drama, it is entirely unlikely that we have the staying power to find anything — that attention span issue is a subject for another day… Oh, look! A squirrel…
Suffice to say, all the stuff around us is huge, exponentially huge and with all that’s available to look at, it would be much like having a Mount Everest bin of popcorn dumped on us and trying to focus on one kernel.
So, with our astronomers wearing the equivalent of dental hygienist 7x googles, we’re not going to discover intelligent life unless it’s very close by… like a handful of light years away… with ET sending big radio signals formatted for talk radio, news and weather together or the Alpha Centauri equivalent of Fox News… modulated in a way that would make sense to us… you know… AM, FM, Morse code… and the like.
Interstellar travel might be impossible
Our galaxy, The Milky Way is huge… 100,000 light years wide. And currently, you and I walk around 1 meter per second. We can drive safely at 100 meters per second… and fly at 300 to 500 meters per second… and ride with Mister Bezos for 9 minutes in space at around Mach 3 (2300 mph…) – that, by the way, takes us 65 miles into the space… the distance you might drive for your fav ice cream cone on Earth. In short: You ain’t gone nowhere yet. The closest star is 4 light years away… 25 trillion miles… so you had better pack lunch.
The great equalizer.
One of the main foundations of the Fermi Paradox is the “reality” that civilizations will exhaust their resources or self destruct before they achieve the ability to get very far beyond their own planetary borough. Currently Planet Earth is a very good example of this. Wars, more wars and more rumors of wars, skirmishes, neglect of our environment and the fragility of our ecosystem are among some of the factors inhibiting our ability to evolve. Let’s face it, we can’t have nice things.
The peril of observational conclusions
Consider the Fermi Paradox perspective from Robin Hansen’s work on Grabby Aliens – the universe appears to be empty and that cultural selection on expansionist aliens would lead to their rapid spread if they did occur to conclude that intelligent life must actually be very rare or that evolution must be very slow. Or, in other words, we are not that much more evolved than primates… and we’ve discovered that raccoons like solving puzzles without the expectation of reward.
My Universal three states of being(s)
a.) We observe no aliens. Good luck with that. I got suspicious when that Irish family moved in next door. My point: In a perfect World we would not see colour, cultural differentiation or class distinction. This is not that perfect World. In our current World, space aliens would move freely among us.
b.) We are so busy expressing our own version of apartheid on the peoples around us that we wouldn’t detect anything truly out of the ordinary… although a flaming plasma head-dress might be a give away.
c.) We are alone. As outlined in my thoughts above, below and as of yet unexpressed.
All these factors are potentially under-estimated when discussing the Fermi Paradox.
- If most of the planets in the universe are too far away for us to see alien life, then if we see it at all we’ll be seeing their space ships as they come to us… less warning than an Amazon Prime delivery on a Saturday.
- We won’t even see them launch to us, even with perfect telescopes staring out into the galaxy, until they’re almost here.
- In practice this means that, in the grand scheme of human history, the phase between becoming aware of aliens and meeting them is vanishingly short.
Example - Expanding alien life capable of sub-light travel will arrive minutes or hours after reaching the outer orbits of our solar system. This periodic table only has the element of surprise!
Conclusion… in part…
Modern culture has been peppered with references to alien arrival in media and film. Truth be told, if our brightest minds are to be considered… is that first contact is arguably tens of thousands or millions of years away… if at all.Are we alone in the Universe? Depending on your statistical model, no… we are very much not alone. That said, there is an overwhelming unlikelihood of someone tapping on our planetary door looking for a cup of sugar any time soon. Leave your comments below.
Colin Newell is a resident of Earth, a popular coffee drinker and talker on subjects far and wide… his brain blips have occupied this blog since the Year 2005!
We re-visit La Belle Patate - fine poutine on the West Coast · Saturday March 14, 2026 by colin newell
First open in late 2008 (bless their hearts!) La Belle Patate is at 1215 Esquimalt Road a block or two (maybe three) past the
Civic Center and Esquimalt’s original strip mall.
Their specialty is Montreal smoked meat sandwiches and Poutine.
Poutine – dish of French fries, topped with a thick beef (or vegan) gravy and a healthy scattering of cheese curds. And for those who feel that this might not be the most healthy combination of ingredients – We are completely ignorant to the fact that Poutine is a cruise missile with your arteries in the cross hairs. But good. So Good!And today we returned after a break… of a few years. Why?! – Why did we deny ourselves for so long!?
Walking through the doors, today, we were greeted with a hearty Colin Newell! (and Andrea! ) from Matty – We ordered two “Steamie” - the dreamiest of hot-dogs (dressed with kraut and mustard…) and a small order of BBQ Vegan gravied Poutine..
The hot dog is steamed and served on the standard bun with cheese, onions and any assortment of common condiments.
The Poutine, which arguably should be served on a skull and cross bones patterned plate, is as described above; fries, gravy, cheese curds… is so comfort food that every bite is yummy inducing. We washed it all down with a couple of samples of Matty’s private collection of Spruce Beer – - Spruce Beer is a carbonated water (with very little sugar ) and some curious botanicals. You love it or you don’t. I love it!
Lunch for two with more protein that is socially responsible – barely 14 dollars.
Matty is such a gentle giant – I regretted being away so long – but all the warmth and memories flooded back. No, you cannot have poutine every day – once in a while – when you need to feel the love that is all around you!Colin Newell is a Victoria resident (retired 2 years) and a big fan of friendly food and great coffee. With coffee mug in hand, he wanders the streets looking for the ultimate caffeine truth!
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2025-The year in review · Monday December 29, 2025 by colin newell
Hey, hey! 2025 is almost done – and what do we have to show for it?
A.I. has taken over most aspects of our lives (apart from this one which is still occasionally tapped out by a human…)
Travel has become as unromantic as possible – hence I rarely travel much beyond the family room…
And flying? Well, I fly my Canadian flag with pride when the wind is gusting under 125 km/hr.
Truthfully, the last year or so I have been in Hamilton, Ontario and Calgary, Alberta.
Photo above: Coffee. Yes, it is still a thing for me!
2025 was a great year for in home cooking and broadening our culinary chops without broadening our waists.
2025 marks almost 2 years retired after 35 years + working at the local University in I.T. and tech – hardware and software support.
That old adage: “I don’t know where I found the time to work before has never been more true. I really believe that this is the most meaningful time of my life and I am happier than when I was carefree and 11 years old. Seriously.
Stuff – I do committee work with the municipality of Saanich… a couple of things… keeping me engaged… on the edge… sharp… where I gotta be…
After 16 or 17 years raising funds for Movember, I have moved onto a much more local project: The Island Prostate Cancer resource center. A great cause for men facing cancer and their families that find value in this great resource.
Music: I have been playing guitar and piano since the 1970’s – my debut album was in 2008 and that is increasingly feeling like a long time ago! Now I play around 1 hour a day – I collaborate with a few other players to make some noise with. Am I thinking long term? No, not at all.
Radio stuff: I am still doing ham radio as well as technical projects that revolve around “amateur” radio – like project building and supporting our radio community locally, regionally and internationally…
Coffee – As one of the (maybe former) authorities on the subject of cafe culture, home and office coffee and espresso based goodness… I am still picking away at my coffee project that started in 1994 — now known as CoffeeCrew.comCheck in…
Is there anyone out there? I genuinely do not hear much from anyone via this blog. It is entirely possible that I am talking to a brick wall… or a dry wall… or a wailing wall. You can send us a shout over here – anyone locally that sends me a shout, I will buy a coffee and treat – and we can talk about whatever comes up.
Colin Newell is a Victoria resident and has been writing about the subject of coffee and pop culture since the beginning of internet time…
Two tunes by Saanich vocal superstar Jeff Albert…
