Branding Buddha

            It was a relief to get up on Saturday without the heat being on. There is no way to control the heat in my apartment and so when it is on it is on full blast no matter what the temperature is outside. It was nice this time to do my yoga in comfort.

            I got ready to go to the food bank at 9:30 and even packed an umbrella in anticipation of standing for several minutes in the rain. When I got there though there was one unattended cart in the rain on the sidewalk and only two people standing in the entryway. I had the thought that maybe there’d been a memo that I had not received. Before bothering lock my bike I went to the door to ask if the food bank was open. The Ethiopian guy who’s usually there with his little dog was standing inside with another regular food bank client. He told me that the food bank had already opened and they were just waiting to be called down. I went back to lock my bike and then returned to the doorway. The Ethiopian guy said he was going to go downstairs but the other man warned that they were probably just going to tell him to go back up here and wait. He went anyway. The other man told me I could go ahead and try but I insisted on staying because he was ahead of me. He informed me that he’d already gotten his food and he was just getting ready to leave, so I went downstairs. The Ethiopian guy was standing outside of the shopping room and I went to stand behind him, but Angie saw us through the window and shouted that we weren’t supposed to come down until someone had called us, so we went back upstairs where he stood inside the doorway and I stood outside under the canopy but leaning on the door to keep it open. I asked him where his pom-chi was and he answered that he’d left him at home because of the rain. Two young men arrived together and we explained the situation. They waited inside and complained that Social Services was not releasing the cheque until October 31^st and so they wouldn’t have any money for Halloween weekend. I checked my bank account online later out of curiosity and saw that it looks like the an amount similar to my usual cheque was deposited. When money goes in at midnight on Friday my account doesn’t show the name of the depositor until the next business day but it’ll probably say “Metro Toronto MSP/DIV” on Monday, so I don’t know what those guys were talking about. Maybe they are on ODSP and it has a different deposit date than my Ontario Works cheques.

            To my left, under the canopy, under her sleeping bag, with a green PVC tarpaulin sheet on top of that, was the still-sleeping homeless woman. I wondered out loud what she was going to do when it got colder. The Ethiopian guy looked out at her and shook his head in pity. The two young men looked at her as well and one of them asked, “The Native woman?”

            A few people with groceries came up from downstairs. The young guys were getting impatient and so they went to the basement. The big Jamaican woman came up with her food and the Ethiopian guy asked her if anybody was down there. She shook her head. He told me he was going down. I waited because I didn’t want to get yelled at again, but after a couple of minutes, since the others didn’t seem to have been booted back upstairs, I went down as well. When I got there I saw that they were being served. That’ll teach me to do what I’m told!

            I guess because they had started so early (I assume because of the rain) that not all of the volunteers had arrived, the food bank was understaffed. The woman that processed me at the computer jumped up from the desk to run over and serve me in the meat and dairy section.

            They were offering two-litre cartons of milk this time but I turned it down because I had three bags at home and I didn’t think I could go through it all fast enough for some of it to not go sour. The yogourt was a 650-gram container of probiotic lactose free vanilla yogourt. After checking to make sure it wasn’t artificially sweetened, I took it. The meat selections as usual were a choice between frozen ground chicken and frozen halal chicken wieners. I still have two tubes of chicken in my freezer so I chose the hot dogs. She asked if I wanted a pack of soy cheese slices but I told her they taste like horse sweat.

            Then Angie came out from the back and served me from the vegetable section. There was a bag of frozen peas, three cobs of corn, a large red pepper, two 680-gram bags of mini-potatoes, three onions and two hard black avocadoes. While Angie was serving me, Sylvia came out from the back said, “Hi Sweetie!” to me and stood beside Angie to wait for her to go back to her usual station, which she did. But since there was no client coming up for vegetables next, Sylvia decided to go ahead and serve me at the shelves.

            Like last time, the only cereal available was the Special K protein crunch, so I took a box. It’s not bad and actually better than the regular Special K, though I find it strange that they’ve branded it as a type of Special K, since it has no flavour or even texture characteristics that would justify it being derived from the original. By contrast, Honey Nut Cheerios still have the character of Cheerios and Cocoa Crispies remain recognizable as being a type of Rice Crispies.

            There was plenty of pasta and rice but the only thing I took from that section was a can of organic tomato sauce.

            The canned tuna was absent this time but there were little cans of sardines in tomato sauce. Canned beans were plentiful and I took a tin of chickpeas.

            The only canned soup they had were ones of chicken broth, but I saw among them a package and I guess I was sold by the words “spicy chicken” so I grabbed that. I’d thought it was a soup mix to which one would add boiling water and it would turn into a delicious spicy chicken soup. When I got it home though I realized it was a “soup kit” and it required the additions of chicken broth, chicken, a red pepper and a can of diced tomatoes. Oh well, it wasn’t going to go bad before the next time I had those ingredients.

            I took a bottle of Greek feta and Oregano salad dressing.

            Sylvia handed me five Star Wars vanilla cake granola bars just like the kind that Jedi knights eat. Next to those were 40-gram bags of Hungry Buddha pumpkin spice flavoured coconut chips with turmeric. On another shelf, to wash that down were half-litre containers of Thirsty Buddha coconut water. Both products were Buddha brand with the same image of a little bald and chubby cartoon Buddha sitting in the lotus position and holding his hands in the prayer position. There are so many products using the name of Buddha that it seems the Christians and Muslims are missing out on a wealth of marketing opportunities. There is no “Ravenous Jesus Pasta and Sauce” or “Jesus Brand Loaves and Fishes”. I was about to say that there is no Jesus brand wine but then I looked it up. There was a California wine called “Jesus Juice” but they had to fold under religious pressure. There is a brand of peanut butter port beer though with the name “Sweet Baby Jesus”. There are surf products under the title “Jesus Surfed” but don’t try to put out any lines of clothing with the name “Jesus” because the Italian company, “Jesus Jeans” have copyrighted the name “Jesus” for any clothing and they will sue your pants off. As for Mohammed, there are obvious reasons why that religious figure’s name is not commercialized, but it goes even further. Despite the fact that Mohammed is a popular name for boys, the Muslim community didn’t even want the name to be put on personalized bottles of Coca Cola.

            The last section was the bread, but I had plenty at home.

            As I was unlocking my bike, the homeless Native woman partially pulled don her sleeping bag and half sat up, grumbling to herself. One of the younger guys that I’d seen earlier came out with his food, said “Here Hon!” and handed her a package of saltines. “Oh, thank you!” she said, and it seemed to cheer her up.

            I was finished at the food bank by 10:15, fifteen minutes before it was supposed to open. If the rain were to always cause them to open that early I would have no problem with it raining every Saturday morning. I would almost be willing to get yelled at too.

            When I got home I put my groceries down and, taking advantage of the fact that I was still dressed to go out, went out to the liquor store to buy two cans of Creemore.

            I spent a lot of the rest of the day writing about my food bank adventure.

            That night I decided to try to use the spicy chicken soup kit to make pasta sauce. I sautéed some garlic and an onion, added a yellow pepper and some of the pork I’d cooked the night before, then I added two cans of sauce and the soup kit ingredients. It took quite a while for the dried soup mix to dissolve in the sauce and then I had to add and re-add salt, Worcestershire and scotch bonnet sauce until it started tasting good.

            There was a message on Facebook from Nick Cushing saying that he was in the neighbourhood to film a band and he could drop by beforehand, so I said okay. Nick arrived just as I was about to eat my sauce with some pasta. He said he’d just had some chicken so I ate by myself while we chatted. He told me a funny story about a relative that was so cheap that when he was prescribed Warfarin pills as heart medicine he thought he could save money by making his own pills out of Warfarin rat poison. Someone stopped him before he could go through with it.

            After I’d eaten I went to make some coffee for us and realized that I’d absent-mindedly forgotten to turn off the element on which I’d cooked the pasta and I’d put the pot with the pasta sauce on that element and left it there. My beautiful sauce was burnt on the bottom so that burnt taste might have ruined it for a second meal.

            Past experience with Nick as a guest taught me that he likes his coffee less strong than I do and so I made two batches in the French press. I made mine first and set it on the table, but Nick thought it was his and drank some. I took it back but he said he wasn’t feeling great and so the germs on the cup might not be good for sharing and besides, it turned out that my tasted good for him, so I let him use my cup and I made another for myself. After he left I poured boiling water over the cup he’d used just in case he really did have cooties.

            I finished reading T. S. Eliot’s “The Wasteland”. It’s interesting but it’s hard to read with a flow because of the switches of language and identity. I began reading it again out loud, without reading all the notes to see if I could feel it better.