Just some thoughts about transportation...

When I came to Canada I was so surprised that there are so many cars on the streets, all kinds of models and it looked like everybody had it and some people had like two or three in the garage and on a driveway. It looked so strange to me.
Again in some residential areas we did not even had walking areas, just driveways and roads. You are not supposed to walk anywhere. It looked strange too.
You go outside, dive into your car and go! I was wondering, what if your car is broken or you just want to walk? What if you do not want to drive?
But having a car in this country looks like a necessity more than a luxury, more like a part of something that you are supposed to have anyway, like education, or watch on your hand or jewelry and make up if you are a woman, or an apartment. And if you do not have it, then something is wrong with you and you have to be ashamed of yourself. It should not be like that but sometimes it exactly how I feel.
I do not have a car and I use public transportation to go to work. It is okay in Toronto, we have plenty of buses and Subway, and we have GO trains and even streetcars in downtown area.
But still when everybody around you driving you feel like you are missing something. A tooth maybe.
I never had a feeling like that in my old country. My husband and I, we had a car for sometime and then it started having problems and we sold it and that’s it. It was not a big deal and to keep it and repair was a big hassle.
But here in Canada, you sort of have to have it, or else. It’s hard to explain but it’s true. It’s almost like you are an invalid or something and I do not like that feeling. My problem is that I do not want to spend all that money on something that breaks, causes trouble, takes so much money from you and have to be replaced in 10 years anyway, so what’s the point to have it?
But I am just a reluctant immigrant do not judge me that hard, please.

Why do I feel depressed in this country?

I can go around for months working, doing my own business and then suddenly something triggers and I feel, painfully and clearly feel that I am a reluctant immigrant here and it probably will never be totally my country. I do not know why I feel like that.
It’s a good country; it’s a first class country. You can have and get and accomplish a lot here. Why the heck do I feel like that? I’ve been here for so many ears it’s time to get used to it, to feel at home here. But no, something always reminds me: no, you are just a guest here; it’s not yours and never will be.
Sometimes I think that may be I should leave and go somewhere else to live, may be I will be happy somewhere in a different place. I am content here but something definitely missing and it is very subtle and I cannot put words to it. Just a feeling of not belonging, of being alien. And it is very strange because basically I do not have a reason to feel like that. I am quite healthy, I have a job, I do not live on a street homeless. I do not have terrible addictions, diseases some people struggle with. I have no reason to feel bad. But I still feel like looking for something dear that I lost in my life and cannot find no matter how hard I am looking.
I am not happy and none of my kids are. My middle son actually suffers from severe depression. It scares me and I feel like I did something wrong.
May be coming to this country was wrong. May be leaving all my life good or bad behind was wrong. I cannot change that. I cannot by miracle make my children small again and take them back to my old country, I do not feel like going back myself, not anymore.
You cannot go back into the past. And I try not to dwell on the past too much, not to be depressed myself.
I am still trying to explain, why in my country where people did not have a lot of necessary things, were deprived from many things, people still were not depressed and I knew a lot of quite happy people there.
And here we can have everything, and so many unhappy and depressed people around including my own children. I still cannot solve that mystery and it bothers me. I never expected that.
May be its just fear of loosing something of not having it tomorrow. Your job, your money, your apartment, friends. You loose your job – you loose a lot, because you loose your credit and there is no more accustomed life style, you have to start all over again.
May be constant stress, that’s why people are not happy there. The necessity of struggling all the time, of stressful lifestyle, I do not know. I myself have to work 6 days a week and I still cannot afford a car and it bothers me sometimes, why?
May be the necessity of keeping up the high standard of living that makes our life miserable and sad, and stressful.
May be it is just a grand illusion, a hypnosis we should wake up from. Well, if I’ll be able to solve the mystery, I’ll tell you but not now. Now I am still looking for the answer.

A special treat for a turkey or how to use it to the last bite

I have a tendency to write about sad things and at the same time I do not like sad things, I like the happy things. So I decided to write about the good old roasted turkey for a change. Yes, ladies and gentleman, turkey.

I am kind of curious. Does anybody know what to do with it after Thanksgiving day is over? When no one wants to look at it as a meal anymore and there is still plenty of it left?
For me it was a problem once, because, you see, in my old country there was a tradition to cook a goose not turkey on a holiday and I started with that in Canada.

But that damn goose that I cooked in Canada looked like he flew from Eastern Europe to Canada without a single stop and just drop dead from the sky at Canadian border and was shoveled from there to a Toronto grocery and not just looked - tasted the same. So I did not have a choice but to drop the tradition and start cooking turkey as everybody else. After some trial and error I managed to produce a pretty decent dish- roasted evenly with nice brown (golden brown) skin, crunchy and tasty and spicy on outside and juicy and tasty inside.
But the problem was what to do the next day? I do not have big eaters in my family and next day after staying in the fridge it is not juicy any more and it loses its flavor too, becomes more and more dry. I worked a plan, which I want to share t with you, my patient readers.

Plan A. When plenty of white meat is still there.
Turkey sandwich.
You will need good multigrain bread. Not the cheapest kind, not too soft. You slice the white meat as well as you can, not very thinly. You spread some mustard on a slice of your bread if you like mustard or some hot sauce if you want it to be spicy.
Put couple of slices of turkey on that peace of bread, put your favorite lettuce on top or spinach, couple of red onion rings, spread some mayonnaise on another slice of bread, put some other marinated vegetables on top if you want, or pepper spread (they sell things like that in jars in Canada, if you like peppers, put everything together and enjoy (m-m-m-m! I want it. I want it now!).
Plan B. If only dark meat left around bones.
If you still have lots of chunks of bite size meat, you can create some fast food dish from it. Quick bites I call it.
Into a bowl you break 2 raw eggs, add pinch of salt and pepper, some dry herbs (half of a teaspoon), half a cup of milk or water, two tablespoons of any regular flour. Blend everything; the consistency should be like for pancakes, so you can coat your bites evenly with mixture.
Put two cups of small pieces of turkey leftovers into the mixture and mix thoroughly, so bites are coated with it.
Heat the deep frying pan with generous amount of vegetable oil hit it to the boiling point. Do not burn the oil, as soon as it is heated, lower temperature like in half and put coated bites of turkey in it. Turkey is not raw so you cook it couple of minutes on one side, flip it over and cook again till golden crust on both sides formed, take it out, drain on a paper towel (better) and let it cool down a little. It ‘s ready to disappear in you mouth.
Plan C. Just a little meat left around bones or it is too dry.
You can grind it in a regular blender with good blades, if you do not have a grinder and add some fresh parsley, white onions, you favorite spices, jalapeno peppers without seeds.
I usually use :

• 1 cup of leftover pieces of turkey, or chicken,
• 1 onion small (1/2 big one)
• 2-3 clothes of garlic,
• half a teaspoon of dry spices(black pepper,garlick,oregano,anything).

I grind it smoothly in a small blender. I have to use it couple of times, as it really is small.
I cook 450 grams of spaghetti, linguini, penne pasta, any pasta that cooks longer and stays harder (not like vermicelli, or Chinese noodles), drain it, put it into stir-fry frying pan with a little bit of vegetable oil, fry it like 2 minutes, add my grinded turkey with onion and spices blended and fry a minute more, long enough to mix everything and turn the heat off. Add more salt if you like. The dish is ready to serve.
Makes a very generous amount for 3- 4 people. That’s it. Bon appetite!
Nothing left from that big turkey, just bones. Okay, don’t expect me to cook the bones. Just discard them or invite your neighbor’s dog, if he (the neighbor of course) does’ not mind.
And wait for the next occasion to cook a big turkey. Happy Thanksgiving, guys, past, present and future one!

There is no place like home

I have got absolutely the craziest idea I think. I decided that I have to buy a house in Toronto to live there with my family. You do not have to tell me that I am nuts.

House in Toronto, Canada, right now is about $300,000 approximately and it is quite average, 3 bedroom house. Nothing special.
I do not have a down payment money nor a good salary. Just my crazy wish. I just think that I have to. I cannot live in the apartment for the rest of my life with rental prices going up every year. That means that I will have to downsize pretty soon and again and again and end up in somebody else’s basement apartment that I hate to do.

I imagine myself being weak and climbing other peoples’ stairs in the basement.

When we came to Canada we bought a house in a small town B*** Ontario and lived there for 10 years and due to family circumstances had to sell it and move to Toronto, back to the big city.
I cannot tell that I regret I sold it, though I regret that I bought it for sure. It was a lemon, you know and a big one. It was tremendously overpriced, I (my family)bought it approximately for 20,000 dollars more than we should and we bought it like a rent to own program that was a b*s* because we just had to have more mortgage on that overpriced old junk, that's what we did and to pay for it for 25 years what we did not. It was a real “money pit” like in a movie. Only in a movie they managed to restore and replace everything very nicely and we did not. We did not have money, any money.

My husband was driving a truck to US and back at that time and I was stuck with my 3 kids without a job or possibility of it in a small town in a new country in that century home (it was built in 1892(or something?), no one knew for sure and had some features that have never been replaced. It had some charm though. It had high ceilings with genuine crown moldings in the living, dining rooms and in the hall. It had yellow brick walls darkened by time and pollution very nicely. Natural though painted wood all over the place.
Nice wooden floor covered by cheap broadloom wall to wall covering all wear and tear made by time and usage. We had genuine brass chandelier in the living room, very heavy. I constantly was afraid that it might go down and kill somebody.
Walls in the basement were so old that plaster or whatever it was there was dripping as the sand of a seashore if you would touch it.

In a bad weather when wind was blowing effortlessly through the house, windows were singing their moaning song, as if somebody was crying: release us, replace us, we are s-o-o old… In a big wind shingles from the roof were flying around and I prayed that there will be some of it still left after the storm , that not all of the roof will fly away.
Lucky for us we usually did not have tornadoes in our area. The heating costs were just staggering. When my husband was on the road in winter and kids at school, I used to sit at my computer with winter jacket on and a hat, turning down the thermostat as low as humanly possible, so my cat was looking at my jacket with envy.

In a bad frosty weather all pipes would be frozen and you could hardly squeeze some water from it. So you have tons of frozen water outside(snow) and no water inside to cook or take a shower! Nice. All plumbers we called periodically to help us with our problem would tell us all kind of fairy tales regarding pipe conditions and some of them even ventured into replacing process. Eventually they had to dig a big trench in our driveway and take out all outside pipes, that were full of tree roots and could not let water through no matter what. The procedure eased our pocket by $5,000 but no more frozen pipes in winter – Hallelujah!

To make our life in the house more thrilling, my nice kids one day decided to go camping in the basement( they had nice playground area there). So naturally they needed a fire. Everybody knows you need a fire in on a campground! They came home for lunch and made a fire in the basement and left. The results were devastating. We did not have money to move out so we had to stay and do renovations after the fire. It was a nightmare for 4 months but we survived the fire and the renovations and everything.

Now when I look back I miss my old drafty house, I long for it. I know my kids miss it too. Because it was our home, it was our life. It was hard and it was beautiful. As life is. We had good things and bad things and good things were more…I’ve been living in my mom’s house or my own for the most part of my life and when I lost it, I thought it is going to be okay, less worries about the roof and furnace and bills, but now I feel that I lost something else, something bigger and more important, that you cannot replace and I need that. My place that I can call my home. MINE. JUST MINE...

And I am determined to do that, just do not know how to realize my dream yet. Not yet. But I will have to figure it out. Well, I accept that I have to buy a house in a pretty miserable condition, but I agree to that and I have experience now, and interest will be considerably higher then normally bank would give me and I agree to that too.

I just need some time so I can save some money for closing costs if not for down payment.
But I’ll buy my own home and make it nice, swear to god, I’ll do that, no matter what, because there is no place like home, there is no place like home.

The most ancient meal on Earth...

I guess people invented bread when they started to collect grains and cultivate them. It's an ancient meal. Meal people ate by itself, with wine, cheese and later as a sandwich. Bread has a special meaning for me.

In my country you are not allowed to neglect it, to throw it away or step on it, it's sacrilege.

If you do not want it, you feed it to the animals or give it to the birds in the park. Or slice it thinly and dry in the oven, sprinkle some spices on it and give it as a snack to your children when they are hungry. Or if nobody wants it - dry it, grind it and make breadcrumbs for your cooking needs. You just do not waste it.

It is a lot of labor to create good wholesome bread and people cherish the creation if not the creator.

My mom used to send me to the bakery when I was fairly small and I would come home carrying still warm "brick", as we called it after its form, inhaling its wonderful nourishing smell, stealing some peaces of crust and nibbling on it.

My mom would never say anything for "spoiling" the bread, no matter how badly I mutilated it on my way home, because when she would go to buy bread she would do exactly the same, tearing the warm pieces of crust and nibbling on it.

It was irresistible. It was rye bread, dark golden brown and very delicious. We had white bread too. It had golden crust and was heavy and tasty too, but I liked the brown one better. I don’t know, may be in your childhood everything tastes better, may be your appetite is different. Though I should say I did not have any appetite at all as a child. I was thin, sickly and constantly with sore throat and something like measles – things you usually do not have as an adult. Pretty pathetic. But I was not a sad child or depressed, that came later.

I liked Nature and could be lost for hours among trees, flowers, birds and other small animals. Nature is still may major way to get some relaxation; forget the stress of everyday life.

But I think I stepped aside from my narration. I just wanted to say that bread was a very meaningful part of a meal in my old country, a necessity to have and eat with a soup or second course.

At one time I remember (long ago, when I was a small child), we had it on the tables of all diners and restaurants all the time, thinly sliced small pieces of bread with salt and mustard jars on the plate. If you do not have enough money to order a good meal, you at least can supplement your meager dinner with some bread. Not a bad idea. But as everything that is too good, it did not last long...

Sometimes when I come to the bakery, I can manage to find bread that looks almost like one from my childhood, but it never tastes the same. I understand that and do not complain. I have lots of things in this country that I never had in my childhood and would probably die for it then just to have it. Life is full of compensations and I remember that.

But I still miss that bread and the people who served it to me.

A confession of a pathetic person.

I am a coward. I am a coward and a sucker, because I betray myself every single day of my life just because, I do not have courage to finish it all. And I am not talking about physical killing myself; I am not talking about physical suicide. I am talking about moral suicide, when every day of your life you are spending doing what somebody else needs to be done but not you. I am talking about that miserable drudgery that life can be when you spending it as an employee.

When you have to get up in the morning and do the same thing over and over again every day at the same time. If you watched that brilliant movie Groundhog Day you understand what I mean, and if you do not, please do watch it, as it exactly shows what life is for people like me. You can vivisect 24 hours of your life into little clutches of time and most of that time is wasted on unimportant things, unimportant for you.
At the end of the day you have not accomplished anything, you just earned some money to survive that’s all. And it pisses me off a big time. Between things I would rather do and things I have to do to survive there is a big gap I cannot close, because I do not know how.

I do not hate my job. My employers are very decent people who are struggling every day to stay in their business and put their hearts and souls to it. They immigrants like me; the only difference is that I am their employee.

Well, I should not complain. Thing could be much worse. Not to have a job as an immigrant is a disaster. At least I can pay my rent and at the end of a day I can have my outdated computer and high speed Internet (the only indulgences I could not live without). But deep down I consider myself a coward. Because I am scared to change my life, I tied myself to employee position and do not see any other option, not for me, never. And if for some reason I will lose my job, I will go and find another, sucker as I am.
A JOB (Just Over Broke). Isn’t it pathetic?

I still feel different in this country.

After so many years, I still feel different in this country. I am from a different world, but I am a human being not a Martian.
When I came to Canada I made a huge mistake. I never followed my education. Somehow I forgot a very important thing that I am from a different country and I am not going to be treated equally from educational point of view at least, I have to prove my credibility and my diploma and that means that I have to reestablish my diploma and that means more education, more courses, more programs. I could not use my diploma and that was really disappointing. I needed some extra education and I did not do any of that.
The problem was that in my country education at that time was free , even university education. You just have to pass the exams to be eligible. In Canada I had to pay money, I could not afford that. I decided to take some practical courses in a vocational school so I could find some job in whatever I get training for. I finished my courses in 4 months instead of a year. It was a joke, completely useless and worthless. I still owe them money. I refused to pay for the b*s they gave me.
Accidentally I found a job in some translating company of Quebec but unfortunately I lost it as quickly as I found it. Simply put I did not have enough experience to work in Canada. I was not ready for it. I was very disappointed but I learned my lesson and gradually learned how to work in Canada.
We moved by a chance to B**d, Ontario. A small town, lost to the world. It was not a wise decision at all. Small town, no jobs. NO JOBS ABSOLUTELY.
My husband started a new business, my help needed, I agreed. Reluctantly. I wanted to do something else, surely I was good at something, but there was no chance even to try. I felt depressed at the end of a rope...
I started helping my husband, learned how to use a computer and bookkeeping - the last thing I wanted to do, but again, nobody asked my opinion. You do what you have to do. It felt like a prison sentence. I "served my time" for 10 years...
From time to time I wrote articles to the Russian newspapers in Toronto, but I did it for free and eventually I stopped. I did some creative writing but never published anything, never tried anyway.
I think I lost it big time. If you come educated you must keep it, sustain it. You should not go and work at the factory or bakery. Work like that kills your energy your creativity, your spirit and the ability to grow.
Assembly line kills your brain, your will to create something new. You have to find the means to educate yourself until you have enough credentials to get a meaningful job or a business viable and sustainable.
You have to learn the language of the country you are living in, it’s a must. Sacrifice a lot, get into bad debts if you have to but get onto your level, level you are comfortable with. It’s your obligation towards yourself and your family. In your new home you have to live with the same level of dignity if not more as you had in your old country.
A doctor should not drive a cab, a professor should not clean the dog kennels. It such a waste of human life, I cannot even find right words for it, just despicable.
It’s like you are going into a debt to yourself. You can change your profession in a different country but it should be compatible with what you had, no less.
You should not put yourself down for the sake of survival because survival in a civilized country is a little bit more than just putting bread on the table or roof over your head. We came to this country for a better life. We should never forget that.
And don’t call me a snob or something, because I am not. It’s just that you have to use god’s given talents in this world and not to sell yourself short. That’s what I did and I regret that. Big time.