Clearly OT (but what the hell...) (was: food

I would be surprised if there wasn't a place on the Can side that had Poutine. Cheese curds and gravy. Even out here in Manitoba it can be found in many of the old "french-canadian" districts. One of the spots I liked in the Canadian "Soo" was a greasy spoon called Mary's (IIRC) ,which had many slavic foods. Obviously I'm more into the quality of the food than the presentation. Had enough of form without substance in the fancier restaurants of Toronto, altho TO does also have more good "ethnic" restaurants than most US cities. Sadly where I'm now living has little in the way of choice, so I have to cook my own. The Americanization is such that even tho it's an old commercial fishing village, has extensive farming, and good hunting, it's very difficult to get local product. Most is the over-packaged crap that comes from the big centres with all the distributive agencies taking a chunk of the pie. Pickerel (which is caught locally) costs $9 a lb while the local commercial fishermen get less than $2. Due to marketing boards and agricultural specialization even things like milk and beef (this area is now a heavy cattle producer) are shipped from the centres. And because of advertising hype McDonalds, Taco Bell, and Pizza Hut predominate, and the locals ignore the food in their own backyard. How Sad. Fortunately because of strong local ethnic tradition, good Ukranian food is still available here. But for how long, when the kids are innundated by TV hype and want to emulate their urban counterparts ? Lawrence I have looked into the future and it's homogenized and BLAND, BLAND, BLAND. Reply to: lgwalker(a)mts.net