I. Am. CANADIAN.

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. This picture is worth way more than that. This photo is so freaking awesome, so unbelievably pregnant with meaning. and if you’re not Canadian [alas, poor you] then you Just. Won’t. Understand.

You take our poutine away and we’ll make the Paris street riots look like kindergarten sleepy time. We’ll make the Mongol hordes look like a bunch of Amish girls out picking daisies. Hell hath no fury like a Canadian denied poutine.

 

 

Click here for the original, plus comments.

Filed under: Exhaust, Food, Canadian, Food

Saying Grace, reason No.# 8527

That fount of life experience, the hand that rocks my cradle, the voice behind the most powerful duas ever made for me … a.k.a my mom:

“You should be thankful that for being in such a country, and that you have so much food available during Ramadan”, she said while gesturing at the variety of dishes laid out before us for Iftar, “because back home in Pakistan its the complete opposite.”

I stopped eating and inquired: “What do you mean?”

Filed under: Cradle, Food

At the Gates

So I just started my new job last week and it’s been pretty hectic, as expected.

For starters, there’s the travel time and distance. Its over 40 km / 25 miles away which is within an average range for commuting to work, but the fact is, Toronto has the busiest highways in North America. So at first I thought of taking the bus and subway to work, but even with the express routes, that turned out to be a staggering two-and-half-hour trip, EACH way. Five hours a day commuting back and forth? Sounds like my college days. I used to skip sleep at home and make up for it on the bus and subway.

Anyways, screw that.

I went to SmartCommute.ca and found two commuters who live close to me and also happen to work near my new office. Coupled with my flexibility of work hours – I told my boss I’d do 9:30 to 5:30 and he agreed – and working from home if I want by just hooking the laptop up to the corporate network, commuting to the office is easy now alhamdulillaah. And I’ll pay them $160 /mth, which is less than what I’d pay for the bus and subway tickets, and definitely less than the gas + insurance I’d be paying if I were driving to work by myself each and every day. So that’s one problem off my back.

Then there was all the mental cramming to do – because of my job as an account manager at the company, which has its HQs stateside, we up here at its Canadian branch are subject to all American laws governing American corporations, including laws such as Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPAA, and more … especially a slew of American export laws. We can’t export to Cuba and Syria and North Korea, and a few other countries, etc, blah blah blah. Financial regulations, getting upto spec on pretty much all the lines of businesses / services that I’ll be handling.

And then there’s the issue of my diet [haha] – I skip breakfast at home and I get to work and this is an example of what I’ve eaten in a day, for breakfast and lunch:

– Spicy Dritos chips with Tostitos salsa sauce
– Haagen Daz ice cream bar
– A slice of potatoe bread [made by a co-worker, she gave me some as she was passing by]
… that’s all for breakfast

Had some macaroni and meat leftovers for lunch, from the day before. THen the Marketing guys came by and told us all to head down to a conference room because they were having some big new product launch and wanted us to check it out. So I go there and of course, refreshments were available so I helped myself to some more Doritos, a Mars chocolate bar, and a cup of really strong Starbucks coffee with like ten pounds of sugar dumped into it, because I never really drink coffee or even tea. That kept me awake for the next house and then the downer came, my body just crashed, and I tried to fight off sleep. That same high metabolism which keeps me in shape automatically with no exercies required, also uses up the energy so fast that it leads to such crashes.

Oh well.

All I ask is that God make me so good at what I do that I make it look ridiculously easy. Because if I can do it, so can you, so can anyone else.

Filed under: Current Affairs, Food, Ghetto

To eat or not to eat …

MuslimMatters had a good article recently on the whole Doritos chips ruckus about animal rennet. I found it to be mostly thorough when it came to explaining their stance on why Doritos are still halaal despite the inclusion of animal rennet during the manufacturing process. 

Being a thorough and researched article, its a bit long but definitely clears up many doubts people have.  Read it here: Of Mice and Men – the Cheese Factor

Hat tip: Thanks to Anes for the link. 

Filed under: Current Affairs, Food

Junk Food. You Know You Love It.

Yes you do. trying to say anything else means you’re in denial.

So listen up.

I think most people have been brainwashed by the health industry. Its a multi-billion dollar-/-year industry and its interested in nothing except promoting this Utopian image of what the “perfect body” is. You all are a bunch of suckers so you buy into that sales pitch and thus, in your never-ending, fanatical craze to have “Le Bod”, you will try to eat healthy, slather on all that cream and make-up, make sure you’re not exceeding some daily-recommended intake of carbs and calories, you spend hundreds of dollars at the gym or on the latest WhateverTrac fitness equipment. You cruise through the TV channels, your mind starts drooling long before your mouth does when you chance upon some specialty shopping channel promoting some dumb new product which you’ll probably pay for in 20 “easy installments” of 59.95 – oh so easy – and then you’ll let it sit and collect dust after using it once or twice.

There’s one born every minute, oh yes…and you’re one of them. Don’t shake your head. Don’t deny it. You’ve bought a lot of stuff based on emotion, you’ve been suckered by a lot of stuff and you never realize it.

You Suck.

So you’ll shell out nearly $250 for that Harry Rosen coat, even though you could have bought an imitation coat for less than half of that price. Its just because you want people to say “oh nice coat! Where’d you get it from?” and then you want to say “Harry Rosen” and lower your voice a few octaves but you wanna be so supa-slick and pretend like you buy from places like Armani, Dior, or Rosen all the time. Ha ha ha. You liar. You never would have the $6,000 to shell out for that genuine Louis Vutton bag, and even if you did, buyer’s remorse would set in soon afterwards because you realize, yet again … that there’s one born every minute.

You Suck.

So now, why deny yourself all that nice, cheap, good-tasting fast food? It’ll make you feel less-hungry, you’ll be tappin’ your stomach and have that moronic smile on your face and say “oh yeah, that really hit the spot”, all without spendin’ a lotta money. And hey, you dont want to be anotha wun of those suckers, so here’s the deal:

New England Medical Journal of Science: – People with higher cholesterol have higher IQs.

Center for Disease Control [CDC] :– Obesity has dropped past #5 on the list of top fatal diseases. Essentially it should be off the radar completely.

Think about it: – If you become a frequent customer of the local BK, they get to know you. They give you good service, after all you are paying part of their salary. You are Le Customer. They see you at the door and with a little wave and a questioning nod, they know you want the same order of poutine, fishburger and pop. So while the other poor slobs in front of you fret and worry about what they’re going to pick and pay for on their 30-minute lunchtime, you wait quietly thinking about other things. You get to the front of the line, you don’t say a single word because you don’t have to – your order is all ready to go, you just cash n dash, or swipe your card. No stress. Stress is one of the leading causes contributing to premature deaths, so why give yourself some unnecessary grief?

Go for a run in the morning. Any possible fat you could possibly have accumulated by eating such normal, widely-available food will be put to good use. Come back in, take a shower and don’t worry about what you’re going to make for lunch because you don’t have to worry.

Filed under: Exhaust, Food, Ghetto, Miscellany

Expecting Fat?

So, we were at some party last night for some girl we know who’s getting engaged to some guy from the ‘hood.

And a bunch of us were sitting around discussing my idea for selling Drano-Coke at fast food restaurants. And in sum, I’ve concluded it probably won’t work for women but men should be just fine.

You see, if men eat junk food and then we have a swig of this drink to clear out the arteries, well that’s fine, it gets cleared out. But if women try to do it, it’ll probably work too. The arteries will get cleaned out quite nicely but because testosterone is manufactured from certain types of cholesterol, there’s a probability that all that fat getting cleaned out of womens’ arteries in the process will either:

a) Accumulate in the womb
b) Get passed on to the DNA of any future baby.

Since the function of x(Ri+S^2) / yx^3i > gf(4@p-2v) indicates that both outcomes are equally probable, what will end up happening in both cases is women using the new Drano-Coke formula will appear expectant and may be so in reality or it just may be loads of waxy fat accumulating in the form of an 8lb 2oz ball of … cherbie. Well, when she goes to the delivery room, the final product is either going to be a lot of fat or a baby that could be pure fat. In which case, the doctor herself will be confused because last time she checked, she didn’t do liposuctions.

So, if you’re a woman and you barely eat poutine and other ridiculously fatty stuff, then please stay that way and don’t increase it. And if you do eat a lot of it, then just make sure you don’t drink any of the new flavor of Coke.

cool? yes, thanks. ciao / chow

Filed under: Food, Ghetto, Miscellany

Frozen Fat Jam

Yes, yes yes I know what you’re thinking … chilled servings of mom’s chicken stew being pulled out of the fridge with orange-brown colored congealed fat and oil jiggling like jello inside the container in between the chunks of chicken.

But no. 

Tonight I had some very thick meat-and-cheese lover’s lasagna, courtesy of the youngest two cherubs in my family. With a fried hash brown. So first there was this massive traffic jam in my pipes as all this artery-clogging cheese and fat brought my natural pace-maker to a near standstill (probably). And then I had some chocolate ice cream out of that big 4L tub, before my baby bro scarfs it all down in his elated state of having had his teeth fixed at the dentist today. Well, all that ice cream caused all that cheese jam to freeze up. Kinda like a frozen traffic jam on Hwy 401? When all the cars stall simultaneously and their batteries die because of -50 C windchill? 

oh Yay. 

Filed under: Food, Miscellany

You must be hearing things …

I always hear the funniest things from my sister. Her words somehow get twisted in mid-air through an invisible game of Telephone before they reach my ears, even though she might be just a few feet away.

So my sister, my mom, and I were sitting around making small talk after I came home. I was at BK again and my sister was going off on a rant about how Coke was bad for my health, with what aspartame and all, and my mother was nodding approvingly, saying “beta you should watch your health, yes.”

That prompted me to regale my mom with pompous, tongue-in-cheek talk about how I am young, and this was the time for eating and drinking, fast driving, partying, etc. I was lying down as I said this and then I thought about my idea of a drink which would clean cholesterol and waste by-products from my arteries, so I sat up, all bright-eyed and reassured my mom that all would be fine, that my company would produce such a drink and I would make my millions by selling it to all the junk-food corporations so that they in turn could tell all the stupid health-care advocates to shut up and stuff it.

My mom began to laugh and said “Wow so, your company is going to go from making nice designer clothes to making … Drano for the human body? What next?” I was like yes of course Mom. My sister turned her head and said what sounded like: “Really? Wheren’t you planning on making TVs with goats?”

Good thing I didnt have any Coke in my mouth then.

In fact she had said “Weren’t you planning on making hotels and boats?”

Filed under: Food, Miscellany

Burger King

It’s official. The new world record is 97 burgers downed in eight minutes. That’s like one burger every FIVE seconds. The current record was set by Takeru Kobyashi from Nagano, Japan. He also happens to hold the world record for eating rice balls, hotdogs, and … cow brains … amongst other records. (What about poutine?!)

I’m so jealous.

(not)

Filed under: Food, Miscellany