HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2002-04-17, Page 5Hitting the bumps
THE CITIZEN, WEDNESDAY, APRIL 17, 2002. PAGE 5.
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I'm chewing as slow as I can!
Every meal I eat leaves me feeling like a
loser. Not a weight loser - I eat 'way too
much for that. I feel like a moral loser.
I start each; meal with a firm resolve to follow
the, advice my public school nurse gave my
class, lo those many decades ago.
"Chew each mouthful at least 20 times,"
Miss Patchett told us. "It's the key to a healthy
digestive system."
I believed her. Still do. And each time I sit
down to eat, whether it's a bowl of granola or a
T bone with a baked potato, I tell myself that
this time, this time. I am for sure going to do
the 20 times per mouthful thing.
Never happens. I always end up hoovering
my plate clean in a feeding frenzy that would
do a piranha proud.
And our beloved food manufacturers aren't
making my speed-eating an easy jOnes to kick.
I don't know if you noticed or not, but fast food
is getting faster every day.
For folks who suffer from the twin afflictions
of liking yogurt. and being in a hurry, there is a-
product called Yoplait Expresse. This is yogurt
that you can squirt straight into your mouth
froth a tube.
Campbell's Soup has a new line they call
Ready-To-Serve Classics. Forget about adding
water and you can toss out your can opener to
boot. With Ready-To-Serve Classics you just
peel, nuke and slurp away. ,
And for you folks who want your morning
breakfast but can't spare the time to actually sit
down at a table and eat it, Breakaway Foods
has just the product line for you. They call it
IncrEdibles. It's a full range of all your
favourite morning treats - scrambled eggs,
when you live in southwestern
Ontario for all or most of your life,
it is difficult to get a handle on
Canada as a nation. This is especially true since
our . country cannot be considered an
homogenous entity but a collection of regions,
not two of which are the same.
In addition we have close to a hundred ethnic
groups each different from the others. For this
reason I find that I get a better picture of the
country when I am somewhere outside tooling
in.
Because of this for the past quarter of a
century I have been . holding periodic
discussions abroad in which the chief topic was
Canada. These discussions are held with non-
Canadians who have either worked here at one
time in their career or else, due to their line of
work, have an above-average knowledge of the
country.
My colleagues are most unanimous in their
praise of Canada as a tolerant country. They are
more than pleasantly surprised that we have
been able to absorb such wide range of
immigrants/refugees to - live alongside the
French and English' who traditionally made up
the majority of the population.
Toronto may not be everybody's favourite
city but it will astonish some readers to learn
that Toronto has consistently been singled out
for its ability to handle some 80 different
minorities with a minimum of turmoil.
My friends realize that living beside the
United States can be a mixed blessing. Because
of our common language, American cultural,
-social and economic pressures onus are both
strong and constant but again we have done a
relatively gOod job at maintaining a Canadian
uniqueness. My Swiss friends compare this
American influence with the German one that
Switzerland „ has „to face , because of its
proximity and common language.' ' ' ' ' ,
/' / .
Arthur
Black
macaroni and cheese, pancakes with syrup...
On a stick. Like a popsicle.
Now you can microwave your IncrEdible,
run to your car and join the morning rush hour
traffic jam, eating with one hand and steering
with the other.
If they come up with a way to glue a cell
phone to the other end of the stick, life would
be complete.
And then there's PJ squares.
If you're like me, a substantial part of your
teenage diet was peanut butter and jam
sandwiches. A slice of bread, a sl-ish of butter,
a gob of peanut butter topped with jam.
Fast food doesn't get much faster than that,
right?
Wrong.
You can now buy PJ squares. These are
individually wrapped slices _that have a thin
strip of peanut butter on one side and a smear
of jelly on the other. Just unwrap it, slap it on
a slice of bread and lunch is made.
Or if you're really desperate, forget the
bread. Just roll up. your PJ square like a limp
taco and pop it in your mouth. Now THAT's
fast food.
It gives a whole new intensity to the term 'eat
and run'. ./
Raymond
Canon
The -
International
Scene
The Swiss Germans, have, to be-. sure,
handled the linguistic pressures by vigorously
maintaining their ovin dialect, Swiss German,-
which many Germans find hard to follow.
No such luck in Canada; any differences
between Canadian and American English are
too small to act as any barrier to Americanisms.
In this respect the French Canadians are better
equipped to ward off unwanted intrusions.
Canadians, they have agreed, are more
modest than Americans but, this spills over into
something of an .inferiority complex which is
hard to shake. Living beside a country which
likes to consider itself as number one in just
about everything probably contributes a great
deal to this feeling, but my friends believe that
we could do more to overcome it than we have
to date. One noted that, on his last trip to
Canada we were more prone to flag waving
than he had noted earlier; a bit more
nationalism may not be a bad thing but it is
only a beginning.
Over the years I have asked them to
comment on the statement that Canada is a
victim of its own geography. While able to
provide examples of the validity of such a
statement, they have come back with the
observation that Canada also reflects its own
geography. The geographical variety shown by
its size is matched by the variety of its
population and its industry, not to mention its
varkety in international activities.
And then there is the other end of the
digestive spectrum: Slow Food. It's a
movement that's already big in Europe (66,000
members strong) and beginning to catch on in
North America.
The Slow Food movement was founded back
in 1986 by a group of — surprise, surprise —
Italian food lovers who got sick and tired of the
expanding commercial juggernaut we call fast
food outlets.
Slow Food's whole premise: food isn't
supposed to be fast. It's supposed to be
leisurely and lovingly prepared and enjoyed.
Eat and run? Forget it.
Slow Food lovers believe a decent meal
should take as long as an opera, a theatre
production or a romantic rendezvous. They
seek out and encourage restaurants that feature
local recipes and cater to small, unhurried
clienteles.
Above all, they want us all to relax and take
a breather with our meals. Their symbol is a
snail.
"Fast food is not genuine food," says a
spokesman. "It fills you up without sustaining
you. I think people are tired of eating things
that have no taste, no history, no link with the
land. They want something better."
Sounds good to me. I haven't seen any
restaurants with a snail logo on the menu, but
I'll keep an eye out.
In the meantime, I'm going to practise. If
you .spot a guy in the local diner who's
hunched over the blue plate special and looks
like he's talking to himself, don't call the cops.
It's only me, in training.
I'm chewing, Miss Patchett, I'm chewing.
They are 100 per cent agreed that we should
not be so dependent on the United States for
our prosperity. Having 80 per cent of both our
imports and exports flowing across the U.S.-
Canada border is to them far too much a classic
case of putting all (or most) of our eggs in one
basket. We should do everything possible to
diversify our trade.
They have constantly suggested mat as a
nation we should be more entrepreneurial; we
should not depend too much on foreign
investment.
We should also break down trade barriers
between provinces. As one of my friends
commented, it is really sad when it is generally
easier to trade with United States than it is with
other provinces. What he said we need is a
free-trade agreement among the provinces.
Finally they believe that separatism has shot
its bolt, at least for the time being. It was for
too long a disruptive influence that could be
put aside (but not ignored). It was pointed out
that more people in Quebec are thinking of
themselves as Canadians first. We must be
doing something right after all.
Final Thought
Aging people should know that their lives
are not mounting and unfolding but that an
inexorable inner process forces the
contraction of life. For a young person it is
alnios a sin — and certainly a danger — to be
too much occupied with himself; but for the
aging person is it a duty and a necessity to
give serious attention to himself.
— Carl Gustav Jung
Don't ever be surprised where it leads
you. It in this case would be life — a
capricious travel guide taking us on a
tour of wonderful venues and experiences one
minute, then catapulting us into drama and
tragedy the next. We will discover stress and
freedom, intrigue and the mundane, worry and
unprecedented joy. It's a rocky road of fortune
and misfortune.
A friend of mine has been going through
some trials of late, life challenges that have
pulled her in a variety of directions for
seemingly no specific purpose. For much
longer than anyone deserves, her life has been
fraught with uncertainty, upheaval, and
turmoil. Good fortune teases, then departs.
Solutions seem close at hand, then disappear.
It's always difficult to watch someone you
care about trying to maneuver when life's
pathway gets a little pot-holed. As a fellow
traveller you know this is what life is about.
Sometimes the ride is wearing, and then for a
time you cruise. Thus when you 'see it
happening to others you do what you can to
help support them when they hit the bumps
and turns, reminding that the bumps could be
bigger, the turns sharper, and the course will
inevitably change.
But ultimately, they are the ones on the road,
the ones feeling the jolts, the ones anxiously
wondering when things will smooth out. We
all know when you're in the driver's seat this
part of the trip can be interminably stressful.
Change is a scary thing and sometimes the
idea of staying on course can be less fearful
than a new direction. Companions can be a
diversion, but the decision to alter course must
be made alone.
For my part, it has taken me years to
recognize that nothing stays bad forever, even
though this rationalization does little to help in
/ the downswing. More importantly, time has
shown that while there may no necessarily
have been method to the madness, where, what
and who I am now has all been a result of
where, what and who I was then.
And while some of the moves were wise,
some of the occurrences positive, I believe an
equal amount of me was built from the
mistakes and wrong choices.
There is a song which when I first heard it,
brought home to me how important it is to
remember this. It speaks not of all the right
things the person did but more about what they
didn't do. It tells of word's that should have
been said, pipers that have been paid,
squandered tears and doors that perhaps
should have been opened, not in a sad way, but
with admirable objectivity. The final message
of this lyrical lesson, is that if one single day
had been changed, what went amiss or what
went astray, the happiness that exists on this
particular day would never have been found.
Like most, I have taken some turns in my
life of which I am not particularly proud. Yet,
with rare exception I don't regret theiri as each
mistake has shown me the right way. And like
most I have confronted my share of bad times,
unlucky breaks and disadvantage. But each
obstacle strengthened my resolve to keep
going, each bump challenged me to hang on.
Because ultimately we all know that while
this journey can be a rough ride, when we hit
life's 407, for a time, at least, it's going to be
the best trip we could ever take.
A look at Canada from the outside