I can't believe I forgot about Canada Day. I didn't even wear red or white or both yesterday.
I sort of feel like it's the equivalent of forgetting the date of your best friend's death. I should know it, acknowledge it, and do something in tribute that day each year.
So in honor of my special place, here's all the things I miss about Canada:
1.The fact I have to spell the above “honor” instead of “honour”, as well as “colour” and “labeling” only has one “L” here.
2.Poutine.
3.The national anthem. Not that i think it's a good national anthem, but at least I know the words. I'm willing to admit though, the US national anthem is damn catchy, it's like they got Timbaland to produce theirs whereas we got some old guy with a casio keyboard.
4.Poutine.
5.Tim Hortons.
6.More specifically, Timbits. Hell, I'll settle for a Dunkin' Doughnuts but they only have effing Krispy Kreme around here, which is the biggest bastardization of a doughnut alive.
7.Poutine.
8.Getting plum sauce to dip my fries in anywhere i go.
9.The cost of gas per liter, not per gallon.
10.Quaker muffin mix. Here the muffin mixes give you at best 6 ghetto muffins. But the paper bag situation in those Quaker brand muffin mixes, omg, you get 24 out of them and they're SO EFFING GOOD....damn i miss those.
11.I miss Shoppers Drug Mart.
12.I miss malls having a Shoppers, Pharma Plus, or whatever. They don't put those in malls here.
13.Poutine.
14.I miss being able to pick up a package and understand either side of the box (French or English). Now i'm like “no espanol por favor senior!”.
15.MuchMusic. I'm not dissing MTV...but they're not the same at ALL (even though I believe MuchMusic and Musique Plus are owned by MTV).
16.A good solid thunderstorm. Which isn't Canadian per se, but I just haven't seen one since I moved here 8 years ago. EIGHT YEARS since I've seen the crazy kind of thunderstorm that's fun to watch from a window, where it's loud, where you feel like everything inside of you is being washed away.
17.Poutine. With ketchup. From KFC.
18.Poutine. With ketchup. From Nickels.
19.Poutine. With ketchup. From Zak's.
20.Poutine. With or without ketchup. (I only acquired the ketchup taste because it was an effective method of ensuring other people would mooch and steal my poutine).
21.Speaking of KFC, i miss KFC fries. Not this stupid potato wedge nonsense they have here. FRIES. The kind meant to be slathered with cheese curds and gravy.
22.I miss going to Club Monaco and paying Canadian prices for their stuff.
23.President's Choice skim chocolate milk. It's the only place where you can get less than 2% milkfat in chocolate milk format. I remember I used to buy that stuff by the carton and chug it straight up in the parking lot. Soooo good.
24.McCain Deep N Delicious cakes.
(25 got jacked up)
26.DAMMIT i'm going to cry i want some poutine so effing bad.
27.Going to a Roots store and seeing Canadian stuff written on the apparel, not US stuff.
28.I miss Molson being truly Canadian, after I became and expat so did Molson. I miss their marketing. Do they even DO the “I AM CANADIAN” ads anymore?! They were so effective!
Which thus leads me to say, I miss the Cabin as well, naturally.
29.I miss Poutine from Minglewoods, which is right next to the Cabin.
30.I miss East Side Mario's. Just for their croutons and chicken tetrazzini.
31.I miss taking $20 cab rides. Not like the $120 cab rides to go down the street like here.
32.I do NOT miss New York Fries poutine. Their stuff sucked balls. But i miss debating with people over the merits of leaving the skin on potatoes when making fries (nasty, IMO).
33.I miss The Market.
34.I miss Le Caveau de Schezuan.
35.I miss spiders that crawl on webs and up high, unlike the spiders here that don't even make frickin' webs and crawl on ME instead....
36.Having a $2 bill/coin (yes, they have them here, but not like you're going to find 'em).
37.Poutine poutine poutine.
Damn I'm homesick for the great white north.
3 comments:
I would gather that no where on the news in your local news coverage of international news did it mention Canada Day. I'm not sure if that's really all that said but I think an honorable mention should be had considering we share the World's longest pseudo unprotected border. Sabina we forgive you, we always will.
I'd like to comment on your things you miss about Canada...
1. My work PC has the U.S dictionary loaded and tend to ignore the squiggly red line saying honour, flavour, favourite, etc are misspelled. Now that I do some work with some folks in the U.S I try to be more cognicent of the U.S way of spelling things then again I occasionally slip and let the Canadian spelling through and no one ever complains.
2. Poutine, DAMN right woman and the best poutine comes from a chip truck, although the quality varies between chip trucks and everyone has their favourite, poutine is better from a chip truck than (dare I say it) even KFC. :)
3. The national anthem, yes it's not the greatest and to be honest the bilingualism of the national anthem is really only known on the Eastern portion of Canada, whereas everywhere else it it sung in English. There's never a bilingual version of our anthem when a Canadian team is playing in California, Florida, (pick your State).
4. Poutine, Yep definitely definitely and I have to admit Sabina that every time I have a poutine I do think of you. Strange I know.
5. Tim Hortons, It's so Canada and it doesn't even matter if other people don't understand it, it was started by a retired hockey player, need we say more? :)
6. Mmmmmmmmm, Timbits. Probably THE best road trip food... along with a Timmie's double-double. Krispy-Kreme makes me wanna yak, Dunkin' Donuts, low-budget not worth eating, it makes me laugh they have a following in the U.S. Was it Wendy's that owned Tim Horton's in the U.S for a bit? They should've really done a better job at franchising Tim Horton's but then again it's hard to compete with Starbucks but it does ok here in Canada even with Starbucks cafe's popping up all over the place.
7. Poutine... Sabina you're giving me a craving for it and it's gotta be made with St. Albert's cheese curds. Would you believe that Gabriels Pizza sells a really poor poutine? Since when do pizza joints sell poutine? :P
8. You know you're right you can get plum sauce for fries, just like people get mayonaise for fries, (still don't get that).
9. Ya gas prices, yeesh, I don't pay for it but damn it's bumped up the price of everything so much for our dollar being close to par with the U.S (surprized you didn't mention that).
10. Oh yes Quaker Muffin mix, that stuff is great, I love stealing muffin's from my parents house. :)
11. Shoppers Drugmarts are popping up like... well Tim Horton franchises and we're not talking dinky little drugstores, we're talking massive stores where fulfilling prescriptions is likely the furthest thing from their mind, although submitting prescription refills via the web is a great feature. Sabina, the Shoppers Drugmarts now would likely be like Shangri-la now for you. ;)
12. Sadly it's very rare now to find a drugstore in a mall, Place D'Orleans just shut theirs down most likely because Walmart has a pharmacy.
13. Sabina, you should make it your personal mission to open people's eyes to the wonders of poutine. :)
14. My French isn't all that good but it is nice being able to read the information in either language.
15. MuchMusic isn't what it used to be and if it is indeed owned by MTV, I blame MTV for ruining it, it's become more variety show based, although some of the shows have a bit of an edge to them (ie: Videos on Trial). I do believe it still plays more music than MTV and honestly I don't know what CTV Globemedia's plan is with MuchMusic but they should really start pushing onto our friends in the U.S, sending some Can-Con could be interesting and it might provide some much needed original content to our friends in the U.S. :)
16. We've had our share of rain this past month 22 out of 30 days were rain and there were a few thunderstorms thrown in for good measure and they were pretty intense, (Tornadoes in Toronto... yep that's right). Then again we don't see wild fires... well maybe Northern Ontario, BC and Nova Scotia do but that's not nearly as often as California.
17 - 20. Something tells me you like poutine. :) People think it's odd that Chris and I put Ketchup on our poutines.
21. Not a fan but ok. :)
22. Club Monaco, yup great stuff, over-priced but great stuff. Definitely a fan of Banana Republic though.
23. I'm going to double-check this but I'm sure all chocolate milk here is made with 1% or skimmed milk.
24. McCain Deep N Delicious cakes, definitely if it's the chocolate one.
25. Nicely, done.
26. Sabina, if I could think of a way to get you a steaming hot poutine to you I would send it to you.
27. I should send you some pics of a Roots store here. I'd send you some Roots Olympic apparel but sadly The Bay now does Canada's Olympic clothing, (a travesty I know). But they still have wicked clothes. What's cool is that they don't sell the other countries Roots apparel... at least not just yet. You can order the stuff online Sabina. :)
28. I think a lot of us miss Molson being Canadian but if it's any consolation Molson is opening up a new brewery in Moncton this year a first in decades apparently.
Ah the Cabin, still a skeezy place to go for drinks.
29. Would you believe that Minglewoods has moved from beside the Cabin (ok across the stree from the Cabin) to Waller St. closer to UOttawa.
30. East Side's... Wow, I can remember going there with Chris, he still goes but there are none downtown. Their menus have changed but I think Chicken Tetrazzini is still on the menu.
31. $20 cab rides don't get you far these days... downtown to Gloucester Center.
32. I kinda like New York Fries poutine, it's not the best that's for sure but ya. I know where you are coming from. I don't think they have the skins on the fries anymore.
33. The Market, one of the reasons why I still live downtown.
34. Le Caveau de Schezuan... Where's that?
35. Are the spiders lazy in California? Mind you it might be because it's too hot high up and it's cooler down near you. :P
36. It's just the Toonie now, believe it or not it's more environmentally friendly. :P
37. I will continue to think of you when I have a poutine.
What you decided to not post a picture of the poutine... I just googled it. Um yea looks not so low fat is what I was going to say...but I guess you wouldn't have to worry about that. Me I couldn't eat that.
You forgot to mention the Swiss Chalet. Yummy. Also, Tim Bits are good. I'm also a fan of their iced cap.
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