Food for thought

Dorsetmike

Member
As you read this you are the oldest you've ever been!

To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.

I didn't say it was your fault, I said I was blaming you.

Women will never be equal to men until they can walk down the street with a bald head and a beer gut, and still think they are sexy.

You do not need a parachute to skydive. You only need a parachute to skydive twice.

To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target.

One for us 'more mature' members -

I'm supposed to respect my elders, but it's getting harder and harder for me to find one now.
 

Krummhorn

Administrator
Staff member
ADMINISTRATOR
Mike, the last one applies to me too. But as time goes on younger seniors will start looking for me ... and that's good because I'll most likely be lost somewhere. :lol:
 

Albert

New member
Lars, you're only a youngster yet, wait until you pass four score!:rolleyes:
For me, that's less than 3 years to go. I just posted a photo taken on July 24, 1965 at the RC chapel in Camp Borden Ontario. I can't believe how skinny I was! You can see why I couldn't escape from her ... with friends like those it would have been painful.
 

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JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
Hello Mike glad to see you are still alive I thought you had snuffed it :angel:
Still a bit worried about teddy............but only a little bit.
 

Dorsetmike

Member
I wouldn't be surprised if Teddy has deserted to social meeja, farcebook etc, seems as though more and more are falling by that wayside.
 

JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
Yes Mike or other forums, I have gone back to TC, I tried out Good Music Guide but it was mainly for lovers of modern and avant garde, Bright Cecelia closed down and a few others have less activity than we do at MIMF.

Any way its good to know you are alive and kicking one of my neighbours died last tue and just heard another one died about the same time, one in her 92[SUP]nd[/SUP] year and the other about 60 we are a small community but very private.
 

Krummhorn

Administrator
Staff member
ADMINISTRATOR
I wouldn't be surprised if Teddy has deserted to social meeja, farcebook etc, seems as though more and more are falling by that wayside.

Yeah, I've been wondering about Teddy myself lately too. Last activity was Dec 2016.

Yes Mike or other forums, I have gone back to TC, I tried out Good Music Guide but it was mainly for lovers of modern and avant garde, Bright Cecelia closed down and a few others have less activity than we do at MIMF.

TC is flourishing with activity, and tops GMG in total thread/post count. I am on one other forum related to organs in general and participate in several organ related groups on Facebook on a regular basis, although FB is getting really nasty with too many Ads lately ... every other entry from family/friends is two or three ads.

Curious to know what happened to Bright Cecelia ... it was one of TC's fiercest competitors for a long while. Many had migrated from TC to BC over the years, but a good number have since returned.

The classical forum on Amazon was also banning/blocking good standing members for no reason since January, so TC had inherited many of their former members as well.

I would love to see MIMF return to the days of 2007-2010. Many of the old timers (by "old" I am not referring to age :lol:) have just vanished. I've tried to reach out via email to some of them and never get a reply, so it's all a big mystery for me what actually happened to them.

Anyway, enjoying the cooler temps during our 'monsoon season' of rain/thunderstorms most afternoons, and of course my new church position that I filled last September. Mary is off to Ireland in September - I'm staying put with the two cats, and of course my church work on the weekends.

Lars :cool:
 

JHC

Chief assistant to the assistant chief
I think when a forum falls below critical mass it is doomed at least 99% of the time. with BC there were at most about half a dozen posters at the end.
 

John Watt

Member
When I think of fast food, there are three big categories for me,
and yes, I'd really like to type about them.
I'm seeing my name as the last poster in too many categories,
so I've been letting this go for a long time, but I have to comment now.

The only foodie job I had was working full time at Kentucky Fried Chicken, in Welland, Ontario.
I was the cook and helped when the woman who mixed the salads came in.
I started off with three, and after a few weeks was having five, pieces of chicken for lunch.
I'd take them from the first batch of the day and bread and cook them again.
And then I'd put them in the heater so they would get drier and a little crunchy.
I'd butter five or six slices of the Greek bread on both sides,
and have two piles of different salads to go with it.
I worked there for only ten weeks, and it was summer, so I ate outside.
Being a full-time employee, I could eat for free. I didn't gain weight.
That was the original franchise, using pots to cook two birds at a time.
When it was sold, that changed to using a different oil product with four birds.
It wasn't a secret recipe, the ingredients for the coating were printed on the bag.
What the Colonel had to make it flavorful as Kentucky cooking could be,
was using buckwheat honey or his gravy with the chicken.
Most franchises hid that behind the counter and only gave it out if someone asked,
and when not enough people were asking, they stopped stocking it.
The Colonel came to Welland and spent a day in the downtown store, a very nice man.
He and his wife were a couple years from retirement, planning on selling their restaurant.
But the stage put a super-highway through and his property was bypassed and severely devalued.
They put his pressure cooking pots, what made chicken a fast food, his invention, into the trunk of their car,
and travelled around selling this concept and recipe.
When the company got international corporate, the State of Kentucky sued them for using the name,
so they changed it to KFC to get away from that.

When my one aunt worked for A&W, going to visit her was as far as my parents would let my younger brother and I ride our bikes.
She would say she was saving the extra drops from the tap for us, always giving us a glass of root beer.
When I was travelling around Ontario in bands in the 1970's, I'd go for lunch at A&W's, parking the band van.
Northern A&W's didn't have girls coming out to clip a tray on the window, and used ordinary aluminum heat savers,
nothing with logos or graphics on them, and the food cost less, more like an ordinary restaurant.
I didn't like a lot of meat, not liking two patties, and I didn't want bacon or cheese with everything else,
so the Mama Burger was my favorite, just what I like in a hamburger, and they were bigger, so one would do.
I'd order a small Chubby Chicken, two pieces, with some fries, as part of my meal,
and A&W was known for being short on fries, so I'd order small fries to add to the ones with the Chubby Chicken.
I'd have a vanilla milkshake and a big root beer to go with it.
Using salt for fries and popcorn is my only putting on salt use, so that made it more of a treat for me.
Sometimes I'd bring my own malt vinegar, liking that better than white.
The A&W in Orillia, outside of town on the highway, tops out my list.
As a band, we could park the van so highway traffic couldn't see it,
and we'd sit at a picnic table underneath a huge willow tree, relaxing for hours.
When you've got a Mohawk with a '58 Les Paul he bought new for a bandleader...

I have to mention "Mountain Boy" chicken, a franchise product sold by 24 hour truck stops.
We'd be getting gas way past midnight, and I'd ask if they had some dried out crispy chicken in the heater.

When sub shops first came out I was going there after the gig, seeing a sub as a nice, light meal,
and a nice combination of fresh vegetables, buns and cold cuts, even if I'm not hot on cold cuts.
When life is going my way, I'm a vegetarian most of the time, only because I won't pick apart food to get rid of the meat.
And sub shops had the newest arcade games, always a big part of the visit.
I wouldn't be saying anything over the microphone, but I'd be asking friendly locals about where to go and what games they had.
For one summer, having a dry sub was my favorite.
Triple cheese, a layer of fresh mushrooms, onions, green and hot peppers, triple of whatever cold cuts looked good,
and... being the lead guitarist in the band usually saw me getting a very deep sub...
mainly because I was always wearing my stage clothes wherever I went.
The Spiderman Pinball Game and the bar-top Asteroid game were my favorites.
I got over my video game addiction in 1980, and seeing Donkey Kong is what gave me my first second thoughts.
The fact that murders were beginning to happen outside the private arcade I was a member of,
built by electronic professors at York University, at a mall at Jane and Finch, convinced me how addictive they were.
That and the fact I was turning down invitations to restaurants and jams after gigs, to go and play computer games.
Rogers Sub Shop on Southworth in Welland has to be my favorite sub shop of all time.

Pizza. I've probably had more bad left-over pizza than fresh good ones.
Having pizza owners let me make my own, using one of their crusts, as a sign-painter, is the best.
My favorite to buy is an already cooked slice, calling it a re-heat.
Put some onions, hot peppers and anchovies with a sprinkling of cheese on top to hold them down,
on top of a cheese and pep slice, and reheat it until the cheese starts to melt. That's really nice.

When I lived in Queenston Heights for two years, looking up at the Brock Monument from the front window,
the A&P in Niagara Falls, by St. Davids, would close on Sunday and mark down products at the end of Saturday.
I had a pizza crust recipe memorized back then,
and always got some cheese marked down 50%, with other people waiting to see what meat was reduced.
When I got a Hickory Farm gift pack marked down, it had a big beef pepperoni in it.
I used a little nice sauce to cook the crust first, put on lots of beef slices with broccoli and mozzarella cheese.
I would mix a salmon spread, put spinach on that with mozzarella or cheddar, maybe my favorite.

But what is truly fast food for me nowadays?
What is it about me that surprises almost everyone I meet, and I'm a pro at surprising everyone.
I'm always carrying a sweet potato in my shoulder sports bag, or in a big coat pocket.
When I feel like snacking, I look for a microwave and four minutes later, I'm eating a sweet potato.
How fast is that?

When Conestoga was a big chain of western themed restaurants throughout Ontario,
I liked the Friday fish fry, all you can eat, with servers usually saying take some home,
wrapping them up for me.
But... their policy was if you order a steak dinner, you got the buffet for free.
And they had an amazing buffet. The turkey salad had huge chunks of fresh turkey,
with too many other items, a huge spread worthy of being a fine restaurant all by itself.
This was strange for me, considering they used barrels of chemicals to soften cheap beef.
What made this a lunch spot for me what this.
When you bought a hamburger plate, less than half the cost of the lowest steak dinner,
it was part of the steak menu, and you got the free buffet for that.
Sometimes I'd invite someone and say I'll pay for the hamburger platter,
and you can eat that if you want while I get food from the buffet.
When you're the only non-smoker, non-drinker, in a band on the road in a new city,
it's nice to have some friendship during the day.

When the first three Swiss Chalet restaurants were built in Toronto,
there was one at the end of the road where my apartment was in 1970.
I'd order the half chicken meal, but it was dipping the buns in the gravy I liked the best.
I also like their red salad dressing the best, a kind of more spicy Catalina.
But when a friendly waiter told me that I could have a cup of extra gravy and buns for free,
just their policy, I started ordering a quarter chicken with extra gravy and four extra buns.
I'd eat the meal, pour the extra gravy on the plate and start dipping.
The Swiss Chalet in Niagara Falls was the last restaurant to keep free extra gravy and buns.

Overall, and this is a definite I can't see changing, Oriental buffets are the best.
I've never met one I didn't like, and always tip heavily.
I'm only of Scottish ancestry, but what Kimonos in Welland does with pink salmon,
breading it for the deep fryer, yeah...

Have I ever caught a fish or killed some game, or picked up anything dead,
to clean it and cook it and eat it myself... no... and I've never even tried.
How can I call myself a Canadian when I drink the water and chew my way through the scenery,
when I've never done that?
How can I think of myself as a man, when I've never hit anyone in the face or got hit myself.
I spent almost eleven years living in bars, hotels and venues, playing around Ontario, living in Toronto,
and no-one ever slapped my face, poured a drink on me or poked a cigarette burn in my shirt.
What kind of musician and man am I, looking at a life that feels detached from the world around me?

See, food and thoughts can inspire each other, and make me wonder, what does "IMO" stand for?

I think I'm going to pop some popcorn, the only time I put butter and salt on food,
and for the last few years, I've been breaking up a big coconut chocolate bar from Turkey in it,
the pieces melting a little, getting buttery and salty.
Six big "Farmers' Market" peanut butter cookies with sticky strawberry jam on them,
and a carrot muffin with lotsa margarine, yeah... that sounds like a late supper for me.
"Black Sails", season three, will be on in the background.
Hand-cutting computer vinyl using sign stencils kept me busy all evening.

Please be forewarned: Get ready for food fights throughout North America,
coming soon to you.
 
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John Watt

Member
Albert! My father was in Camp Borden when the war ended.
He tried to sign up at the start of the war,
but he was only 5'5" and 145 pounds, only taken towards the end.
When I was on the road I made a point of driving by, so I was there.
After the war, he went to the Page Hersey steel factory, and was told he was too small.
He went every morning for a month until they decided to hire him.
He wanted to marry my mother, meeting her at the Cotton Mill before he signed up.
He worked for 33 years without a lost time accident until he had his first heart attack.

Congratulations for having a well-dressed bride, being a well-groomed husband,
with so many friends for such a formal and dignified wedding.
 

John Watt

Member
Yep... yep yep yep yep... there I was, playing in what became the highest paying band in Niagara Falls,
what you could call a country band, not miking the drums or being loud, and being very versatile.
We played two weeks in one club, two weeks in another, what you could call house gigs,
for a long summer, in that band for a year and a half. That was the band with my Mohawk friend.

It was 1977, and it was the first time I saw Buffalo Chicken Wings being sold, a big seller right away.
I went from nibbling on little bags of potato chips and nuts, to eating free, left-over chicken wings.
At five cents each, people were ordering platefuls and passing them around, and leaving some when they left.

When I was in high school, a couple of guys I knew worked at Black Lantern, an oriental restaurant.
They were saying I should come in and order a plate of chicken wings, what most people didn't want to eat,
because I'd get a good count, enough to bring a friend.
There was a dry, jai-doo or jar-doo, if I remember, and a sticky honey-garlic flavour.
Other restaurants were throwing chicken wings away.
Not after Buffalo Chicken Wings came out.

If I started typing about when shrimp in a basket became a bar food...
oh yeah... I could have sold my processed remains as ambergris, maybe getting $800.
Did you know... yes, do you know any ambergris history, or trivia?
Ambergris is whale poop, and the best ambergris comes from eating shrimp.
Whales can get a mouthful that might be over a ton of shrimp.
They have to submerge to the depths of the ocean to their deepest pressure,
to help squeeze out what becomes a mass of gelatinous material, hardening as it rises and cools.
Found floating on the ocean, what could be over two tons, or in pieces on the beach,
it's more expensive than gold and is used for the best perfumes.
Kings and Queens of Europe used to eat ambergris, before the Industrial Revolution killed them all off.

Right now I've got three packs of simulated crab meat, $1 each, and a new bottle of seafood sauce.
That's not deep-fried shrimp, but it's better, getting the strong seafood flavour and seafood sauce,
without the deep-frying.
And as a show-band musician, I just hafta say, or suggest, or put it out there, for your entertainment pleasure,
that my toilet paper has pirate flag graphic art on every sheet...
and just like me, they're not just double, but three sheets to the wind.
 
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Albert

New member
Albert! My father was in Camp Borden when the war ended.
He tried to sign up at the start of the war,
but he was only 5'5" and 145 pounds, only taken towards the end.
When I was on the road I made a point of driving by, so I was there.
After the war, he went to the Page Hersey steel factory, and was told he was too small.
He went every morning for a month until they decided to hire him.
He wanted to marry my mother, meeting her at the Cotton Mill before he signed up.
He worked for 33 years without a lost time accident until he had his first heart attack.

Congratulations for having a well-dressed bride, being a well-groomed husband,
with so many friends for such a formal and dignified wedding.
Thank you John. My Dad was in Camp Borden while your dad was there. He was smaller than yours: 5'4 1/2 (Don't forget the half inch) when he signed up. He taught rifle throughout the war and was p***ed off that he never got to go overseas. They told him he was too old, having been born Friday 13 January 1905. He left us 9 October 2007.
 

John Watt

Member
Albert, let me say something that is of great comfort to me, and my father, about that war.
This created great dissention in our clans, my mothers' and fathers'.
Both sets of my grandparents left the Scottish island before the First World War,
not really caring who won it, but thinking whoever did would want to repatriate them.
And the new weapons of war were devastating for cities, not just hand-to-hand any more.
No-one wanted my father, the first-born in Canada, to fight over there.
I'm sure you can imagine this now, after seeing so much Viet Nam war protesting.

But that changed after I worked at the Atlas Steels.
When you were hired, they gave you lessons about working with war veterans,
mostly over 55 by then, and when I began working with them I learned even more.
That's not because war soldiers liked talking about it, in fact it was the opposite.
But it was telling my family about their psychological symptoms from what was new, shell-shock,
that made everyone, including my father, admit it was good for the family that he didn't go.
Even he admitted that the returning soldiers he worked with became sad alcoholics,
more than anything else, and didn't last long in their jobs.
Welland is unusual that way, being the steel factories that supplied weapons parts and shell casings,
when the factories of England and Europe had been destroyed. It was a very big business here.

My father bought a rifle like he had at Camp Borden at Zellers, a war surplus for $24.95.
He took it out along the canal and set up coffee cans full of packed soil,
to shoot at them. He never let me fire it.
He said he wanted to show me what a rifle bullet could do, so I could see for myself,
and understand what some of his training was like.
Hey! That wasn't your father shooting live ammo over my Dad, was it?
I'm the last one left alive, and I never planned on living without them.
 

Albert

New member
My Dad taught people how to use the rifles. He did not engage in the live firing training exercises. He also taught me to respect the weapon and what it could do. The .303 British calibre that the Royal Enfield rifles used is still one of the most versatile ammunition there is, although no-one seems to respect it any more except the Canadian Federal Possession and Acquisition paperwork. We owned and hunted with two Enfield rifles: a pattern 1914 used as a sniper rifle until 1943 according to some sources. Very accurate, that we used to hunt in open terrain, and a sporterized Mark V (shortened barrel, stripped down stock) that we used in wooded country. We also had side-by-side shotguns in 12 and 16 calibre, the ubiquitous Cooie .22 (ours was branded Army & Navy), and absolutely delightful Winchester 22 magazine fed bolt action that my mother used to get two (2) Dominion Marksman shields, although she never went hunting.

I sold the whole lot to a collector a few years ago. Since my burnout in 1967 (NATO service in West Germany in Tactical Nuclear Weapon period) I have never fired a weapon. He bought the shotguns, 22's and sporterized Enfield reluctantly, but it was the only completely original P14 he had ever seen and wanted it desperately, so he bought the whole lot and a gun case for it.
 

John Watt

Member
I'm not sure whether to start with a "wow" or an "oh!"
That's a huge career with some very serious military involvement.
I can see why you're up in the Rockies if you've got a sniper feel for things.
Thinking about our postings here, I was remembering my fathers' rifle as being a 202,
and I was thinking Lee-Enfield, but that could be just seeing that over time, and you're saying a 303.

Germany, with both the American and Russian domination, represented the height of the Cold War,
a more psychological nuclear stress than the combat in Korea and what became known as war in Viet Nam.

When I typed about my father and the contention of his wanting to fight in the war,
that was also about my mother.
She kept working in the cotton mill after my father left,
and box cars full of captured German soldiers would be sitting outside on the tracks,
before they were transferred to the big prison camp towards Fort Erie.
When it was her lunch break, she would take water out for the prisoners.
She was told she would get fired if she did it again, but she did,
and arguing that it was her lunch break and she could do what she wanted won the day.
That prison camp later became a city, Stevensville, with many prisoners becoming Canadians.

When the Izsa family moved into a new house across the street when I was seventeen,
they became customers for my newspaper route, and just said they were German.
When Mr. Izsa recognized my mother as being the woman who brought out the water,
he later gave me a big sign-painting job for the Club Heidelberg, when he was President in Port Colborne.
His son became a good friend of mine. That got me work for a big German village in St. Catharines too.

You said you experienced burnout. I know you can rise from those ashes a better man.

Hunters around here are excited about the black panther or cougar with two young,
that at first were rumours. A horse with deep scratches created a debate about how they happened.
But a farmer cleared an area of snow and put out some feed with cameras on it last year,
and got some video of these three cats.
The turkeys that were brought up from the States and let loose in Short Hills Park in St. Catharines,
took off right away, going along the escarpment to the Welland Canal, going along that to Port Colborne,
and now turkeys are being seen all along Lake Erie.
I stopped my bike one time to watch eighteen cross the road, both sides forested.
They're huge birds, and when I see one I'm not thinking that looks good to eat.
I don't know if it's just their name, but I feel I can run after one and catch it.
They must take over fifty feet before they get going fast enough to fly away.
I got off my bike to chase one in the snow and the wing patterns were interesting to see.

A desperate gun collector. That doesn't sound good.

I'm tempted to provide the link for Bruce Cockburns' "If I had a rocket launcher",
but I'll wait for you to reply, not retaliate.
One day I'll make it out to B.C. to see the Rockies, ocean and forests,
and spend time in a Haida village.
 

Albert

New member
Wanting something desperately was perhaps an unfortunate wording. The rifle has not been fired since 1963. The collector is one who is interested in weapons with history behind them, and wanted a P14 Lee Enfield in the worst way. He had and has no intention of ever putting ammunition in it, let alone fire it. I'm on your mother's side of things, by the way. She was an honest person, apparently. Those poor soldiers were not the faulty people in any way. They were draftees, just like many millions over the years. They were lucky to land in Canada.
 
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