The challenges of a gluten-free diet

When I went gluten-free a couple of years ago, the first thing I heard was, “get ready to pay four times as much for a loaf of bread.” The second thing I heard was, “good luck finding gluten-free beer.” Those were ominous signals for a guy who’d lived on beer and bread for fifty years and then some. But it hasn’t been the end of the world. Yes, ten bucks for a loaf of bread and twelve dollars for four bagels is a lot. That’s three bucks per bagel. For that kind of money I used to get the bagel with the cream cheese and smoked salmon already on it. Not any more! The beer thing has been hit and miss. Glutenberg makes a passable beer. It’s competitively priced, relatively speaking, but it’s often out of stock. Nevertheless, it’s my first option, especially the yellow cans, which, if I’m not mistaken, is the IPA. The green ones are the lager. I used to favour the lager till I found out it’s got double the calories of the IPA. Tonight I was doing a comparison test of the Boxer gluten-free beer and the Forager brand from Whistler Brewing. Both are available here only in those small cans that always leave you thirsty. The European standard of 500ml for a can of beer should be the global standard as far as I’m concerned. We get close enough with our 473ml tallboys, because who’s gonna notice the missing 27mg? But once you’re down to the 355ml tin, forget about it! It’s impossible not to notice you only had half a beer. As for the comparison test, I definitely prefer the beer out of Whistler to the beer out of Wisconsin. The question is, do I prefer it enough to justify paying an extra $4.50 for a six-pack? Mostly that’s a redundant question, because my experience has been that gluten-free beer inventory is in such short supply you’ll buy whatever’s available. But back to the original point; gluten-free food is prohibitively expensive. I saw a story the other day lamenting the fact that poor people are hardest hit by inflation in food prices, especially fast food prices. Apparently poor people need to eat fast food. Tonight I had a chicken pot-pie that came from Newton’s non-gluten in Guelph. They do awesome work in gluten-free, and you can buy their stuff at the local Foodland. Expensive? Four of those chicken pot-pies came to $55. Each one is a complete meal unto itself, featuring fresh local ingredients and a gluten-free pastry crust that you’d never suspect was gluten free. That works out to $14 per meal. You’ll pay more for a Big Mac meal at the Mickey D drive-through!

Some Jewish students don't feel safe on campus

That’s understandable. Many university campuses are witnessing major protests against the live-streamed genocide ongoing in Gaza. This is the biggest wave of protests to hit elite universities since the Vietnam war era. You can’t very well speak out against this genocide without criticizing Israel. After all, it’s the IDF, at the behest of the government of Israel, carrying out the genocide. That government proclaims Israel as an exclusively Jewish state. It claims to act on behalf of all Jews everywhere. Some people object to the term “genocide.” Would you prefer “crimes against humanity?” How about “premeditated mass murder?” Doesn’t really make you feel any better, does it? While there are some Jewish students who don’t feel safe on campus, there are many others who are shocked, ashamed, and outraged at what the Netanyahu government is doing in their name. That’s why Jewish students are heavily over-represented among the leadership of the very protest camps that make some other Jewish students feel unsafe. The Jewish students who don’t feel safe were given the spotlight on Parliament Hill today. Looks to me like the Jewish students who don’t feel safe are being organized and coached by Chabad House and Hillel. These messianic NGOs, for lack of a better label, are all in with the settler ideology of Jewish supremacy that has brought Israel to the abyss. Their ideological brethren in the Holy Land are the people blocking aid trucks from getting into Gaza today, where children are starving as a result of the genocide that Netanyahu and Gallant announced in advance last October. So, who are you going to support? The Jewish students who don’t feel safe on campus? Or the Jewish students appalled and disgusted by what the government of Netanyahu and his extremist religious fanatic coalition partners are doing in Gaza?

Why Kendrick Lamar believes Drake is a fake

Leave it to CBC to get to the bottom of the Drake - Lamar feud. Matt Galloway had some experts weighing in on the matter this morning. Apparently the famous rapper “straight outta Compton” takes issue with the authenticity of the famous rapper “straight outta Jewish day school” in Toronto. After all, they both got rich in a genre that celebrates, let’s not mince words, some of the more violent and dystopian aspects of Black urban culture. That’s why so many up-and-coming rappers are dead and gone long before they’re rich and famous. Lamar has a point. There’s no comparison whatsoever between coming up poor and Black in Compton, and coming up middle class and Black-white-Jewish in Toronto. None. Might as well be two different planets. That’s why I think it’s time for Drake to take a hiatus from his music career. Once you’re the hate magnet of millions of authentic ghetto thugs who idolize Kendrick Lamar, and they obviously know where you live, take a break. Smell the flowers while you can!

Drake-Kendrick Lamar feud takes deadly turn

When the news came out that uber-famous rapper Drake was building a home base in Canada's most exclusive postal code, the neighbors whispered amongst one another, "there's gonna be trouble." They were right! Check it out from the CBC; Security guard shot outside Drake's mega-mansion. Bridle Path, Drake’s ‘hood, is the toniest, most posh neighborhood in all Toronto, where the median price of a crib, as the rapper’s like to call their place, runs about 8 millions. While I don’t follow matters in the world of rap music much, the CBC itself has informed me Drake has been in an on-going feud with Kendrick Lamar, another big name rapper, but in this case, straight outta Compton. My hunch is that “straight outta Compton” beats “straight outta Jewish day school” in the world of rap cred. Yo Drake, if I was you I’d be watching my back!

Closing the barn door twenty years after the horse got out

My teaching career left port in 1995, when laptops were a novelty and cellphones where seldom seen, except amongst school board admin, who were the earliest of early adapters. That was always a head-scratcher. When some school board wanker was tooling around Grey-Bruce, they were never more than 15 minutes away from a school, where they could use the phone to their hearts content. But what if they had to call head office in between those 15 minutes? After all, as everyone knows, school board superintendents do a lot of really important stuff. Mainly, they are responsible for liaising with other school board superintendents, and also with the Ministry of Education! They are the very foundation of our education system! They obviously have a lot of high-end responsibilities that can’t wait 15 minutes before the Superintendent for Student Achievement or some equally redundant time-waster makes it to the nearest school. Once the top-level school board worthies embraced cellphones, the die was cast. There was no turning back. I began to notice the impact by the late nineties, mainly because teenage girls would erupt, mid-lesson, into sobs of grief because their boyfriend had just terminated their relationship via old-school flip-phone. Then, when smart-phones took over, things really went for a shit. That’s when every research question you ever assigned became Wikipedia copy-and-paste. And as smart-phones got smarter, things only got worse. To be fair, there was resistance to abdicating our responsibilities as educators in favour of big tech. But we were very much in the minority. Every time you brought the matter up at a staff meeting, you’d be drowned out by the kool-aid drinkers who would regale you with the many studies, inevitably funded by big tech, that proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that more tech in classrooms was the future of learning. The template was established by the leadership of the school board. Fast forward to today. In the last few years before I retired, I could walk down any hall in my school, and see that many of the teachers and most of the students were on their cellphones. Of course it was all in the name of “learning.” Too bad reading and math scores have been dropping precipitously since we turned education over to big tech. Twenty years after I was calling bullshit on our rush into big tech-enabled imbecility, it’s become an “issue.” The government is going to “crack down” on cellphone use in classrooms. Good luck with that!

Chrystia Freeland's Canada; $13 billions for Ukraine, $200 a month for the most vulnerable Canadians

One of many pie-in-the-sky promises Team Trudeau made during the last election campaign was to lift our fellow citizens, suffering from mental and/or physical disabilities, out of poverty. And what a beautiful promise it was. To be sure, those trying to make ends meet on the strength of a disability pension are inevitably mired in deep poverty, in addition to whatever other challenges they may face. In my province, the Ontario Disability Support Program maxes out at $1,300/ month for a single person. That’s in a province where you can’t find a one-bed flat for that. Thank goodness food banks are plentiful in Canada, otherwise these people would starve to death. Since winning the 2021 election, the Liberals haven’t made a move on that lifting-out-of-poverty thing. Since the next election will roll around in 2025, advocates for the disabled had high hopes something would be announced in this years budget speech. And it was. Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced every Canadian living on a disability pension would get a $200/month lift out of poverty… into more poverty, obviously! But let’s not be too hard on Chrystia. She’s got bigger fish to fry than a bunch of whiners in wheelchairs. In the same speech, she set aside an additional $320 million for Ukraine. Whether that’s included in the $13 billion we’ve already sent, or if it’s new money, isn’t made clear in this CBC interview with Ukrainian PM Denys Shmyhal. But what is clear is that, unlike the advocates for Canada’s disabled, Shmyhal is utterly enamored of Chrystia Freeland! According to the Prime Minister of Ukraine, Chrystia is the very best friend of Ukraine! I understand Chrystia has a soft spot in her heart for the Ukrainian nationalists, due to her family’s history of collaborating with Nazi Germany during the holocaust, but has she no decency? Shouldn’t she try a little harder to be a better friend to the most vulnerable Canadians?

Foraging for fiddleheads to boycott Loblaws

I spent a couple of hours in the marsh across the way foraging for fiddleheads this afternoon. This is the first time in a few years that I managed to get to the fiddleheads before they were three foot tall fern fronds. I can’t remember who turned me on to this delicacy, but I recall harvesting them along the banks of the Speed River south-west of Guelph fifty years ago. Back then, you headed out on May 24 weekend to fill your satchel. We’re a couple of hours north of there, so you’d expect the season to be a week or so later. Instead, fifty years on, the season is first week of May instead of last. Must be part of that “climate change emergency” so many folks are obsessed with. Quite aside from coming home with exceptionally nutritious and totally unprocessed free food that Loblaws didn’t get a cut of, the afternoon was time well spent. Firstly, you get away from the poison of the screen. I don’t know about you, but I generally never walk away from six or eight or ten hours at the computer feeling happier, more contented, or more optimistic than when I logged on. Then there’s all that fresh air and nature. As I made my way along the creek bank, I startled a nesting pair of Canada geese, who promptly paddled downstream with five hatchlings trailing behind, young enough to still have their yellow plumage. Later, a sandhill crane took flight just in front of me. I made my way home with about a pound’s worth of fiddleheads. I’ve got one recipe for all my foraging finds. Fry it in butter and salt lightly. Use salted butter and you can skip the second part. Whether it’s wild leeks, morels, or puffballs; fry in butter and salt lightly. It’s shocking how much food goes to waste simply because we don’t look at it as food. Every autumn, the backroads around here are lined with apple trees groaning under the weight of a perfectly edible crop, destined to fall to the ground and rot while folks pay five bucks for a three-pound bag of apples at the grocery store. Dream globally. Live locally. Forage as much as you can.