Canadiana

Yesterday I was forced to attend a useless biosafety seminar. (Unless you work in a level 4 biosafety hazard lab dealing with ebola infected rats. Oh wait. There's only one of those in Canada and it isn't at this fucking university). I swear, you would be worse off swallowing a mouthful of seawater than if you accidently ingested some of our culture organisms (algae fer chrissakes, they sell the dried up stuff in holistic medicine departments). And yet, I spent six hours learning how to double glove when I'm at the fumehood, and how to import recombinant organisms over the border. Mandatory is overdone.

Anyway, a new lab recruit was sitting near by. He is from Yugoslavia, has spent the last few years in Switzerland, and has been living in Canada for a few months now. CBC recently had on a program describing "Canadian foods". Sounds like a good program, wish I had caught it. He asked if we had ever had poutine, and where he might get some here in town. He described it as french fries, with mozza cheese and gravy. I wanted to get into the minutae of poutine, and how actually it's cheese curds and not just grated mozza as it is sometimes served around here, but held my tongue. I haven't had much luck finding a good poutine spot in town so far. Although, as a public service announcement, I should have pointed out the difference between poutine they serve at KFC & arena canteens:



(Yummy artery-clogging fatty fatty goodness)





and the poutine rapee my grandmother makes with her acadian Catholic church ladies group every Saturday as a fundraiser for the church:



(Gooey grey shredded potato surrounding a lump of salted pork)




Both of French Canadian origin, both potato based, but not at all the same.


He also mentioned pemmican as being a true canadian food. We learned about pemmican in fifth grade, as my school spent the bulk of the social science curriculum devoted to learning how Native Canadians lived. My husband has also wondered what it tastes like, but it's not exactly the thing one can purchase at the grocery store (as I explained to my coworker). So I googled it to see if I could order some over the net. Don't know exactly how that would work, but might be an interesting cyber-adventure.

At this point, the seminar restarted, but I was distracted enough to think about other distinctly Canadian foods. Donairs came to mind, as did garlic fingers. Someone just came into the lab and said he had never even heard of BBQ chicken pizza before moving here. What do these things have in common? Carbs slathered in high-fat/high-sugar sauces. Mmmm...
Have I forgotten anything important? Anybody catch the CBC program?