A story on a local organization reaching out to help the unhoused in my current area. The director of the organization is quoted using the term “unhoused”, but the reporter (or their editor) decided to use the more charged term “homeless” in the by-line and the article.
Haha, the first thing I did when I got to my apartment in Canada was buy a 10 or 20 kg bag of flour.
You can eat pretty well off onions, carrots, turnips, potatoes, rice, beans, and beets. Also ground horse meat was super cheap for some reason in Montreal, and actually really good. I think I was in the 2-5$ range per meal.
Over here pandemic survival was pretty straightforward. The country was covid-free about a year into the pandemic, but you couldn’t enter or leave the country, and there was mandatory free testing. Positive? Off to military quarantine for you. Not fun, but you’re fed pretty well and receive free medical care if needed. Then once Covid finally arrived, we had 2 months of don’t-leave-home-for-any-reason (you could order food online), followed by a free vaccination campaign. Covid became irrelevant shortly after that. While I’m saddened that it was hard on other people, it was a very pleasant 2 months of quiet study and remote work for me.
So we didn’t quite skip covid, but we nearly did. If we were on the priority list for vaccines (e.g. a rich country), we might have done it!
I would say the biggest effect of Covid was we began to question our assumption that America is some sort of well-organized paradise. People here still have a pretty high opinion of the USA, but it really got knocked down a peg that year. People still have a positive opinion of Canada, at least until they try to get a visitor visa… that process has been an embarrassing mess for 5+ years, even without the recent hiccup!
I’ll add lentils to the list. The dried ones work like beans but cook like rice with no soaking, and cost nothing here because we’re such a big producer. Spices are also pretty much non-perishable in a sealed container. There’s all kinds of niche canned goods you can find, too, and of course fruit. The only thing I’d really miss is greens.
Someday I’m going to write a non-perishable recipe book and start ordering cans wholesale in advance.
We produce a lot for some reason, even though at least the Anglo half culturally doesn’t eat it.
It looks great via Hollywood, but once you’re up close you realise the political gridlock is all-consuming.
Well that’s nice. Yeah, some of our government departments are an absolute nightmare. I honestly wonder if we need to rebuild them from the ground up. It shouldn’t be that hard to get basic paperwork done.
Haha the Anglo half. I’m the French speaking person in an English family, from a French province, in an English country.
Then I immigrated to Vietnam, which is a member of the Francophonie, but very few people actually speak French, but they assume I’m from France.
…I’ve honestly lost track of which half I am now. It’s all too confusing.