[NTLK] OT: Poutine Burger

[L.W. Brown]

Thanks!! Very thoroughly explained, and enlightening to this relative newcomer to the area - certainly the homemade ghee and yoghurt explanation is new to me, and quite interesting, as ghee & yoghurt are AWESOME to cook with. (We must dine together at the Granville Island farmers market some day.)
The Fb campaign was a disgusting embarrassment, and (in my ever-so-humble, cynical opinion) clearly the stale, tired result of a PR firm trying to gin up local support for Costco’s quite public efforts to get the city of Bellingham to pay (out of taxes) for a brand new road, at a new location, so that Costco could move to a bigger, more profitable, site without having even worse traffic congestion than they have now. (Truly does get awfully crowded on the single main road by that store on shopping days.) What better way to get what you want? Just try getting the local yahoos stirred up and “hating” on those (purely coincidentally, largely dark-skinned, Indian subcontinent, turbaned) Canadians coming to buy “our” gas & milk, ostensibly to “dodge Canadian taxes” (extra dog-whistle: US pay-tree-utts all hate soshullist guh’mint taxes, and - apparently - even those who are trying to avoid them!)...
(Additional background: area Canadian, & American, Sikhs do clearly love Costco’s milk & butter, but the ethnic Euro-Canadians tend to congregate at Trader Joes - which has awful milk, by the by - also causing some traffic congestion, but so far no similar call for a "USA-day” - maybe, perhaps, because TJ is not planning to move…)
((Just one correction: there is no tax on groceries, but there are taxes on gas, and clothes, etc., tho much lower than in BC.)

So much for an “enlightened" corporation, and so sweet to see the “free" market in (political) action.
But I digress…

And now, for something completely different, back to regular programming:
poutine on a burger sounds awful, but yet compelling, like standing on the roof of a very high building, suffering both a strange compulsion to - & shuddering fear that you will - jump over the railing...

Live green.


On Apr 30, 2014, at 12:41 PM, Andrei Chichak <newton at chichak.ca> wrote:

> On 2014-April-30, at 4:41 AM, L.W. Brown <lwb at mac.com> wrote:
> 
>> “Buy” the way Andre: how many gallons of milk and pounds of butter does a family actually need?
> 
> The question is actually more complex than you may think. Here’s the story for the uninitiated, Bellingham, Washington (population 82K) is about 25 miles (40km) from the Canada/US border. Canadians from the Vancouver, BC area (population 2.5M) hop in their cars and make the trek to Bellingham to partake of the cheaper prices and different selection. Washington doesn’t have sales tax whereas BC definitely does, therefore staples such as gasoline, cheese, and milk are cheaper and, if you buy enough, can easily pay for the trip.
> 
> A while back there was an item in the international news about “filthy” Canadians “swarming” and filling up the parking lot in the Bellingham Costco, buying up pallets of milk, and leaving their garbage in the parking lot. They were called “milk piranhas” and a call was put out on Facebook for an Americans only day at Costco. There were complaints that Canadians would buy clothes, change in the parking lot (probably to avoid paying duties), and discard their old clothes in the overflowing garbage bins, or just beside their vehicles. 
> 
> The butter hit the fan. The Canadians apologized (not really), and the uninvolved Americans pointed out that without the swarms of Canadians making their treks to Bellingham there would be no Costco and the Bellis Fair mall would be unsustainable. Calls were put out to recognize the friends from the Great White North and their economic bolstering of an otherwise depressed region.
> 
> 
> Why would anybody need that much milk? A complex question. In Washington, milk is comparatively cheap because the farmers are allowed to use growth hormones. These hormones are not allowed in Canada, and due to lower production quantities and taxes, the prices in Canada are higher. The no-hormone milk is available in Washington as well, but it is as expensive as regular (no-hormone) milk in Canada.
> 
> Who needs this much milk? People who make their own yoghurt. 
> 
> Who makes that much yoghurt? The immigrants in the Vancouver area that come from the Indian subcontinent. Yoghurt is a basic ingredient in making your daily meals, so buying 16 gallons (64 litres) of milk at a time is a reasonable thing to do.
> 
> Butter? Have you ever tried Butter Chicken? mmmm. Or you could clarify it into Ghee and use it for all of your cooking rather than vegetable oil. 
> 
> It’s all a little more time consuming, but cheaper to make the base materials. Since cooking is time consuming and (maybe) the women don’t have commercial jobs, they can get the base materials, in the quantities that they need, that they are accustomed to, without having to pay extra for the proper stuff from half way around the world.
> 
> 
> 
> As for filthy, this could be xenophobic racism, or it could be a reaction to possible clashing cultural practices of having untouchables clean up after the higher castes. 
> 
> Cleaning up after others is hard and hiding behind economic benefit is a lame excuse. Canadians should not dump their discarded clothes in parking lots, or avoid paying appropriate taxes and tariffs. Canada is not a “melting pot”, we embrace the cultural differences that come with immigrants rather than squelch them, this can cause friction with people who feel threatened or have been discriminated against in their history. Some cultural habits conflict with expectations in their new country, some die out, some persist.
> 
> When going to other countries, everyone has to be conscious of different cultural perceptions and habits, and adapt. In Canada, please don’t squat on the toilets or spit in the streets. In China, don’t flash your money around. Be yourself, but know that some of your habits may need to be toned down to form that thin veneer of civilization.
> 
> Enough,
> A
> 
>> 
>> On Apr 29, 2014, at 9:19 PM, Andrei Chichak <newton at chichak.ca> wrote:
>> 
>>> On 2014-April-29, at 10:13 PM, "L.W. Brown" <lwb at mac.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> Down here, we’re always having to clean up after you guys…
>>>> ;-]
>>> 
>>> Sorry. 
>>> 
>>> (the deals at Costco Bellingham are so awesome that we must leave our discarded clothing in the parking lot, ewwwwwwwwww)
> 
> 
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