Canadians, Food, and The Best Way to Be Kind

We just returned from a trip to Buffalo to visit my family, which as always was lots of fun. We go every summer for the Taste of Buffalo, a huge food festival. You may guess from my blog entries that I have a bit of a love affair with food, and most of my family is like this as well. So a food festival is a perfect reason to make a trip to Buffalo. I had something called chocolate sin. It was rich chocolate cake drowned in chocolate fudge, with a few strawberries. It was the most delicious food on earth. I also had about 1 zillion calories of other food, most of it incredible. It was wonderful!

One thing I love about the greater Buffalo area is the Canadians. We brought our wii with us on vacation, but of course forgot our wiimotes. So at 9:30 pm one night, I was off to Target in Niagara Falls, USA. I think I was the only person who didn't have Ontario license plates! I don't know what's up with the late night American shopping needs of all those Canadians, but the Target was completely hopping.

The guy checking out ahead of me ran out of American money and tried to give the cashier a coin. I couldn't see it well, but I think it was a toonie. With an annoyed tone in her voice, the cashier asked, "Don't you have any *paper* money?" He rooted around in his wallet and pockets, and pulled out some other coins to hand over to the cashier. With such disgust, she said, "What ARE these?"

I'm of two minds about this. First and foremost, you're a cashier working near the US/Canadian border. You're going to get Canadian money. Suck it up, or get a different job. However, having worked as a cashier near the US/Canadian border, I know what a pain in the tushy it is to get all the weird Canadian money. It takes forever to close out your drawer at the end of your shift, and it messes up your reconcilation (especially for me who had to do currency conversions in my head). Mostly, though, I was just annoyed that I once again picked the wrong lane and spent approximately ten thousand years to buy a wiimote.

As I walked out to my car, a bright yellow Hummer raced through the parking lot. It had Ontario plates. It made me glad to realize that us Americans don't have the market cornered on bad taste.

While at my parent's house, I perused my mom's People magazine. In it was a blurb* about some book called Quantum Wellness. I highly doubt I'd like it as apparently Oprah likes it. She's a pretty good judge of what I'll hate. If Oprah recommends it, I can almost guarantee I'll loathe it. But one quote really caught me: "It's making tiny changes that affect your health and the global well-being in a big way." I very much agree with this, and try to make the small changes in my own life that will add up to big changes. However, the author immediately ruined it by giving this example: "Like cutting out animal products: you're decreasing your chance of getting cancer, but you're also helping animals by not eating them."

Wow, there's so much wrong with that statement. First, I would argue that becoming vegan is not a "tiny change" in your own life. Also, it shows a complete lack of understanding of the affects to the environment and animals if everyone immediately became vegan. But, what really got me was the idea that you help animals by not eating them.

I was thinking of trying to do something to help the homeless. Oh, I've got an idea! I can not eat them. They'll love that.

Well, I'm back now, so expect some more blog entries. Leave me a comment about any crazy Canadian stories you have, or food festival memories, or just to say hi. Yes, I'm whoring for comments. What can you do?
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*or was it a review? I don't regularly read People, and it seems like everything in the entire magazine is just a blurb. I don't recall it being quite so devoid of content in the past, but perhaps that's because I normally read it while distracted in doctor waiting rooms.