Corner of Bourbon & Division

I need a source for TVP that's not six thousand miles away from me!

Anyone know of a place that's either in the Verdun-LaSalle-Ville Émard region, or else near downtown/Westmount/NDG? NDG is as far out as I'm willing to travel for my non-meat protein options.

Since BorderCrossing is a vegetarian, I'm trying to move my diet in a vegetarian-friendly direction, the better to accommodate her when she comes over to eat here. Turns out she's not a huge fan of chili and other bean-related dishes, but I figure that I can always try to do something else creative with TVP. Yay experimentation! ;)

Also, I am disappointed in the local selection of tofu. It all seems to be the type that's got a really grainy texture, which makes it sub-optimal for making smoothies (my primary use for tofu). I don't like feeling as though I've added half a cup of sand to my smoothies. :P My Loblaws used to have this nifty tofu-in-a-box which was nice and smooth, but they appear to not have it anymore.

In other news, I am wearing one of my polar fleece sweaters today, and feeling very toasty in it indeed. I still haven't figured out how to alter the dratted thermostat in this place. The thing says it's 19 degrees, but I am skeptical. It sure doesn't *feel* like 19 degrees in here, and on top of that 19 degrees is usually higher than I like it, so mnyeh.

My chili is in the crockpot, and in a few moments I'm going to do more dishes (funny how cooking produces a TON of dish-washing) and then start on the squash soup. With any luck, the soup will be ready just in time for me to start the muffins I forgot that I wanted to make. Once the floor guys make an appearance, I'm going to dart out to buy freezer bags and Tupperware, and then come back in time to make borscht and possibly spaghetti sauce. At this rate, the spaghetti sauce may have to wait until the weekend, because I'm rapidly running out of time. I may also have to pick up some more cans of tomatoes, because I just went through a whackload of them, and I'm back to pre-shopping levels of canned tomatoes (although I was very good and used the older cans, doing a proper pantry-rotating thing in order to ensure that all my food remains good to eat).

I am super excited about getting my chest freezer next week. Whee!

This has been a busy week. I'm embarking on a couple of new projects, which I shall no doubt discuss in here when they become a little less nebulous in my head.

I got felled by a monster migraine Tuesday night at work. Around 7pm my body very decisively said to me: "You're going home NOW." There's no arguing when my body takes that tone with me. I excused myself to my coworkers, called my supervisor to tell him I had to leave, and left. I medicated myself to the gills and slept for 13 hours, and luckily woke up without a trace of the migraine except the usual residual feeling of being a bit fragile for a few hours.

The moral of the story is that I'm not allowed to do overtime anymore. The last time I had a migraine this bad was the last time I did overtime. I attributed it to the fact that I was doing a double shift overnight and thus messing up my sleep patterns, but that's not the case at all. It appears that my body will. not. tolerate. more than 40 hours a week of work. A few hours of overtime here and there is fine, but not the equivalent of an extra day's work.

I had a lovely luncheon yesterday with silly_imp, whom I have asked to initiate me into the whole being a vegetarian thing. We had a delicious lunch, and a fascinating discussion that ranged from vegetarianism to the kind of professional choices people make and why, all the way to religion (paganism and quakerism, especially). It was really lovely, and I'm looking forward to the next time we can have lunch together again.

Vegetarianism is one of the aforementioned new projects, since I'm getting into it. The way I see it, I am going to be a vegetarian when I cook for myself. I eat relatively little meat anyway, and being a vegetarian at home will be both cheaper for me and allow me to contribute to helping the environment. I don't really know much about where the meat at the supermarket comes from, and I doubt it's very healthy. A lot of it, I suspect, comes from the US, which generally speaking pumps its livestock full of growth hormones and whatnot. Also, locally-produced meat is not necessarily any better, and contributes considerably to the pollution of rivers and groundwater.

I also suspect that being a vegetarian will allow me to be healthier in the long run, and maybe even lose a bit of weight, if combined with exercise and other healthy habits. :)

I had a bit of a chat with my coworker (the one who was so concerned about my eating habits) about vegetarianism last night. She didn't understand why anyone would want to become a vegetarian, since humans are *meant* to be omnivorous (her emphasis, not mine). I explained that while humans *could* be omnivorous, it wasn't necessary, and that many different populations are almost exclusively vegetarian. I went on to outline my reasons for considering vegetarianism (see above), and she appeared quite impressed by my train of thought. It appears the only vegetarians she knows had only one reason, and that was: "OMG it's cruel to kill the baby animals oh noes!" I can understand how that would be annoying and unsatisfying as a response.

As I told her, I have no objection to killing animals, so long as it's done for the right reasons: food, clothing, and the occasional protection of the self. My main problem with supermarket meat, increasingly, is that I have no connection to it: it's packed in plastic and styrofoam and shipped from far away. I cited fearsclave as an example: he goes out, shoots a rabbit, comes home (waves it at his Wuh-Mun) and dumps it in a stew pot. I have no problem with this. It just seems to me that, on the whole, Western civilization has disconnected considerably from their food, its sources and the reasons for which we consume it.

Because my day is never complete without three or four really intense discussions, the same coworker brought up the issue of what it's like being gay. (There was a very amusing incident on Monday night in which one of the supervisors "found out" that I was gay —not that I was hiding it, but he just hadn't known, but essentially now it's public knowledge, as opposed to something I'm just not actively hiding)

So I spent the better part of two hours talking to her and the other guy on my shift about my experiences. They both don't know any gay people their own age, and have only stereotypes or (in the girl's case) older family members to go by. So I fielded the usual questions:

- Did you always know you were gay?
- How did you figure it out?
- Are you completely comfortable with who you are?
- Do your parents know? What do they think of it?
- Is it something you could change if you really wanted to?
- What if you fell in love with a man? Would that change how you identify yourself?
- If you were given the choice, would you *not* be gay?
- Do you want children?

Etc. They were very respectful in their questions, and I think I made some big inroads in dispelling some prejudices they didn't even know they had. The only question that irritated me slightly was: "If you were given a choice, would you *not* be gay?"

That was asked by the male coworker. He didn't mean it badly, but it's an absurd question, and I told him so. I explained it this way to him: You're essentially giving me a choice between having an easy time, and a hard time. The fact that I am sexually attracted to women has little or nothing to do with it. I told him that I was going to spend my. entire. life having *this* conversation with people, that I was going to spend all of my life "coming out" to people who don't know I'm gay, and working to change their perception of what a gay person is or should be.

If I had the choice, I would choose not to have to do that. I am not someone who enjoys the spotlight, and having people grill me with questions about my sexual orientation is not something with which I am especially comfortable. I answer all questions as openly and honestly as I can, because I truly believe it's important for people to understand, but that doesn't mean I have to like it.

If being gay and being straight made no difference in terms of how hard my life would be (which is a moot point, because it's not true), then I said that I would flip a coin. If it didn't matter, then, by definition, it wouldn't matter which I chose. Who cares who I choose to sleep with? I am a writer, a musician, a dispatcher, a daughter, a friend, and any number of things, as well as a lesbian. The fact that I sleep with women changes very little about who I am, when seen in that light.

Anyway, I appear to have given them some food for thought, and that can only be a good thing.