Alas! My final column for The Daily. As a parting gift, I wanted to give you this truffle recipe to bring you out of the depths of exam depression in the weeks to come. Thanks so much for reading. It’s been tasty.

Ingredients: 1 cup heavy cream, 1 lb (approximately 450 gm) finely chopped bittersweet chocolate, 1 tsp vanilla extract, 8 ounces unsweetened cocoa powder.

Method: Place the chocolate in a ceramic bowl and heat the cream in a saucepan over medium heat until gently simmering. Remove the cream from heat, add the vanilla, and combine completely.

Simmer the cream for two more minutes. Pour the cream over the chopped chocolate and let sit for five minutes. Using a whisk, beat together the chocolate and cream until extremely smooth. Pour the mixture into an 8-inch baking pan and cool over night (or for at least five hours). In the morning, put the cocoa in a bowl and use a teaspoon to scoop out small balls of truffle from the baking dish. Each ball should be about 2 cm in diameter. Roll the balls in the cocoa and serve. These keep for about a week in a sealed container so long as they’re kept in a cool place. If you want to put several layers of truffles in one container, make sure to use wax paper between layers.

The post A bittesweet goodbye appeared first on The McGill Daily.

I fell victim to greenwashing: a marketing technique that uses “green” imagery and vague, misleading, or unsubstantiated claims to sell less than sustainable products, people, or services.

Greenwashing is relatively easy to spot so long as you’re willing to adopt a healthy amount of skepticism and know what to look for:
– Hidden environmental trade-offs: Exxon Mobil claims to have reduced their greenhouse gas emissions even though they produce over 3 million barrels of oil every day to be burned (based on 2008 figures).

– No proof: Many cleaners claim to be “biodegradable” without listing a reliable certification, a percentage, or the length of time their product takes to biodegrade. Given a couple of thousand years, even the toughest plastics will break down.

– “Green” products produced in dirty factories: In order to build the battery of one supposedly “green” hybrid car, the nickel has to be mined in Canada, shipped to China to be processed, shipped to Japan to be put into a battery, and then shipped back to the assembly plant to be put into a car.

– The use of scientific-sounding jargon: A shampoo bottle advertising 80 per cent post-consumer HDPE (High Density Polyethylene).

– Vague assertions and fluffy language: Claiming to be “all natural” doesn’t mean you’re “green.” Formaldehyde, heavy metals, and uranium are all technically “natural.”

– False labels or certifications: Beware of tiny, green, official-looking logos that say things like “eco certified,” “eco-safe,” or “eco assured.” Companies often invent these logos to “certify” their own products. Some legitimate labels include the EPA’s “Design for the Environment” label, Eco-Cert, EcoLogo, Energy Star, EPEAT, FSC, Green Seal, SFI, USDA Certified Organic, and Water Sense.

– Irrelevant assertions: Many air fresheners claim to be “CFC-Free” even though CFCs have been illegal for decades.

– Claiming to be the lesser of evils: An SUV claiming to have lower emissions than other vehicles in its class.

– Blatant lies: “Non-toxic” bleach.

– Associative green imagery: The luxuriant, green tropical leaves on a cosmetics package. The images are extraneous and completely unrelated to the product.

The roots of greenwashing lie in the history of environmentalism. At some point in the latter half of the 20th century, environmentalism stopped being just a fringe movement of hippies and idealists. It gradually moved into the mainstream. Apocalyptic narratives of an environmental endgame began to percolate through the media and the constant effort of activists and artists exposed some of the devastating injuries we inflict on the planet. The ghastly scars left by open-pit mines, smoke stacks hurling toxins into the atmosphere, choking metropolitan smog, melting glaciers, levelled forests, dead landscapes, extinctions – the threat became familiar, people became aware, and public opinion slowly shifted toward environmental sustainability.

This was a huge success for environmentalism. The movement toward “buying green” began at the grassroots and expanded until spending habits began to reflect a widespread desire for environmental sustainability. According to Futerra Sustainability Communications, “ethical spending” in the U.K. increased by 81 per cent between 2002 and 2008. The “green dollar” mushroomed beyond all expectations, and what was a tiny niche market in the ’90s has become an impressive trend. In an economic system with the consumer at the centre, this shift toward ethical spending should theoretically have precipitated enormous changes in the environmental practices of corporations and producers.

In appearance, this is exactly what happened. Marketers responded to the burgeoning demand for environmentally “friendly” products with an explosion of green advertising. By appropriating the imagery and vocabulary of the environmental movement, marketers were able to tap into the impetus of “environmental friendliness.” Suddenly, everything from kitty litter to cars is marketed with a green focus. In a survey of six popular magazines’ advertising trends – Time, Fortune, National Geographic, Forbes, Sports Illustrated, and Vanity Fair – a TerraChoice study found that green marketing rose from two per cent of the total advertisements in 1999 to over 10 per cent in 2008. Between 2007 and 2009, the number of “green” products in 24 North American big-box stores increased at an average rate of 79 per cent per year. Now, green marketing has become so ubiquitous that many people don’t even notice it. It has blended into our cultural landscape. All of this wouldn’t be a problem, except for the fact that most of what looks like plain, honest green marketing is in fact deceptive or disingenuous at best.

I’m not talking about a few products, either. Greenwashing is a massive phenomenon. According to the TerraChoice study, 98 percent of the 2,219 products they surveyed were greenwashed to some extent, leaving a meagre 25 innocent products. Children’s toys, cosmetics, and household cleaners were the worst offenders of all. Of the 18 children’s toys they surveyed in Canada, they found 53 “green” claims, none of which were legitimate. The same held true for the 119 baby products and the 236 claims they made. In Canada, 215 common cosmetics made 613 claims and all of them were guilty of greenwashing; cleaners made 537 claims and only three products were properly labelled. While most greenwashing errors occur because of marketers’ laziness or ignorance rather than malevolent intent, the result remains clear: most of the “green” we see falls short of the truth.

You might ask, “So what?”

Aside from the fact that greenwashing is essentially lying (and last I checked, lying is a bad thing), it threatens to undermine the positive effects of any consumer-led sustainability movement. For every environmentally conscientious consumer who buys a falsely labelled, greenwashed product, a similar product making legitimate claims loses support. It eliminates the potential benefits of a green purchase. Although many companies have actually ameliorated their products or manufacturing processes and ought to have support for doing so, greenwashing takes business away from these legitimately green companies and their work is for nought. According to TerraChoice, legitimate eco-labelling in North American big-box stores nearly doubled from 14 to 23 per cent of total “green” products between 2007 and 2009. While this statistic is encouraging, greenwashing renders any real green efforts effectively useless by diverting support away from where it is deserved.

More threatening than anything, though, is the cynicism greenwashing creates. If consumers can’t trust green claims at all, they’ll get angry, they’ll get fed up, and they’ll stop caring. If we fall back into complacency and stop giving a shit, nothing will be done and decades of environmental progress will be wasted. We can’t let that happen.

The obvious first step is to avoid greenwashed products. Learning to recognize greenwashing takes little time, and withholding our individual capital exerts pressure on companies that aren’t green. Letting others know about greenwashing is also important. Advertisers need to be held accountable for disingenuous messages, and the more people that are doing this, the better.

But is this enough? To help answer this question and shed some light on the future of media activism vis-à-vis greenwashing, I spoke to Kalle Lasn, the co-founder and editor-in-chief of Adbusters Magazine.

We shouldn’t be surprised by the deception of greenwashing, Lasn explained. “Corporations are interested in selling stuff. They’re not on some kind of do-goody mission to save the planet. They’ve discovered that it’s hard to sell to an ecologically-minded population without some green component to their brand or advertising.” While there is always a genuine component to this “ecological mind-shift” and many corporations have really changed their corporate culture for the better, being completely green is rarely possible, and companies resort to greenwashing. Calling them to account for this deception is an important but incomplete solution.

“The real problem is that there’s a fundamental contradiction between the $1-trillion per year advertising industry [that’s 12 zeros!] and being green. Ultimately, what being green requires is that we consume less, not that we buy more green products,” illustrated Lasn. In part, green advertising has absorbed any impetus for the fundamental changes originally espoused by the environmental movement and diverted it toward buying. “Our media systems give us a bit of information while prompting us to consume at the same time,” he said.

Consumerism is predicated on constant consumption, and the resources being consumed must come from the earth in one way or another. Even if we buy “green” and this extraction becomes slightly more sustainable, the total amount of resources we’re consuming hasn’t really changed and the environment still suffers. Buying will never really save the planet. Consumerism will never become truly sustainable. Instead, we need to go the next step and move beyond consumption as a solution.

Remember the first of the three Rs: Reduce! If we consume less, fewer resources will be extracted from the earth. Lasn explained that consuming less is important but still only a partial solution. “We have a simplicity movement. We have Buy Nothing Days. We have a small percentage of the people who have already recognized the problem, and they’re buying local, buying less, growing their own gardens, and taking their money-power away from mega-corporations. A lot of us are already doing this, but I think it is a very tiny percentage, and this will never go too far. Ultimately, I think the only solution is to go for fundamental changes.”

“That is the real story here. We, the consumers, are in denial about what’s really happening. Deep down in our guts we know that our children and future generations could be in big trouble because of the way we’re living, because of the way we’re consuming, and because most of us in the rich first world have five-planet lifestyles,” said Lasn, drawing attention to the fact that our one Earth does not have enough resources to sustain our lifestyles.

“There’s a contradiction not only within the corporations that are selling us stuff, but there’s denial and contradiction in our own lives. The two somehow collude, and instead of reducing consumption; instead of taking some power from corporations and giving it back to civil society; instead of realizing that we don’t need a $1-trillion per year advertising industry telling us to consume more; instead of thinking about different information delivery systems and coming up with a way to communicate that isn’t so commercial; instead of going even deeper and realizing that our whole economic paradigm, the one taught at your university, is fundamentally flawed and that we need to move from a neo-classical economic paradigm to an ecological one; instead of making the fundamental changes we need, we are changing light bulbs, buying hybrid cars, and doing the frothy stuff that doesn’t actually make a huge difference at all,” he said.

According to Lasn, most of us haven’t realized what’s at stake: “There hasn’t been a scary enough tipping point. Not enough wise people have realized what’s really happening. We need people with the guts to wake up out of denial and actually confront the cracks in the system instead of just reading articles about greenwashing and doing that surface stuff that doesn’t really count.”

“What we really need is a cultural revolution.”

And the onus to act is ours. Whether you want to call it a cultural revolution, a mind-shift, or a change in paradigms, it’s just as clear now as it has been for 20 years: something needs to be done – about greenwashing, about corporate influence, about the myriad of other problems we recognize every day – and we’re the ones to do it. Young people, students, us; we need to realize that our education and youth make us responsible, whether we like it or not, for any changes we want to see in the world. Rather than hiding behind an insipid haze of irony and complacency, doing nothing, and abetting the problems with our tacit consent, we need to act. There are no excuses. We have all the tools. We are pure, passionate potential.

The post Mean green advertising machine appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Burritos 

Ingredients:
1 package tortillas (Note: Make sure you buy sturdy tortillas. Some organic varieties crumble and fall apart on the grill.)
1 can refried beans, 1 jalepeno (diced)
1 green onion (diced)
1 bell pepper (seeds removed and sliced)
1 small bunch of cilantro (chopped)
cheddar cheese (grated)
1 large advocado (pit and skin removed, cut into slices)
pineapple salsa (see below)
 
Method: the ratio of the combination is up to you, but make sure you don’t get greedy and over-stuff your burrito – things get messy. Otherwise, add your toppings to the middle of your tortilla in a line, fold in the ends, and roll it up. Heat a bit of olive oil in a non-stick skillet on medium heat. Fry your burrito on both sides till crunchy and golden brown. Enjoy, and don’t forget the napkins.

 
2. Pineapple salsa
 
Ingredients: 
1/2 can sliced pineapple (drained and diced)
2 green onions (dicecd)
1 jalepeno (diced)
a small bunch of cilantro (diced)
1/2 red bell pepper (diced)
1 small, ripe tomato (diced)
a pinch of cayenne pepper
the juice of 1 lime
salt and pepper
2 tbsp liquid honey. 
 
Method: Combine ingredients in a mixing bowl, cover, and refrigerate until ready to serve. You can use your left over ingredients in an accompanying salad.

Note: the salsa also tastes delicious as an accompaniment for nachos, chicken, or beef. I like it with my scrambled eggs, too.

The post Burritos with homemade pineapple salsa appeared first on The McGill Daily.

1. Beaver Dams
The miniscule amount of effort required to make these delectable cookies is so amazing, it feels criminal sometimes. Chocolate lovers beware! These are too good to resist.

Ingredients: 1 cup semi-sweet chocolate chips, 1 cup butterscotch chips, 1/4 cup butter or margarine, 1/4 cup smooth peanut butter, 1 cup peanuts, 2 cups chow mein noodles.

Method: Melt the first four ingredients in a large saucepan over low heat, stirring often. Remove from heat when completely combined. Mix in the peanuts and noodles until they’re completely coated. Use a fork to make small piles on waxed paper. Allow to cool before eating. They should look like tiny beaver dams. Delicious!
2. No-Bake Peanut Butter S’More Cookies:
I adapted this recipe from something I found online. I was skeptical at first, but these cookies surprised me with their rich sugary goodness.

Ingredients: 2 cups brown sugar, 1/2 cup cocoa, 1/2 cup melted butter, 1/2 cup milk, 3 tbsp. peanut butter, 1 tsp vanilla, 3 1/2 cups graham crackers (about one sleeve) broken into coarse chunks, 2 cups mini-marshmallows.

Method: Combine sugar, cocoa, butter, and milk in a saucepan pan and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Remove from heat, add vanilla and peanut butter. Stir until completely blended. Slowly fold in the graham crackers and marshmallows. Spoon onto waxed paper and refrigerate until firm.

The post Unbaked goodness appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Ingredients: 
Thin (vermicelli) rice noodles, olive oil, spring roll paper, 1 boneless, skinless chicken breast (cut into finger-sized pieces), fresh mint, cilantro (chopped), 1/2 cucumber (sliced lengthways), red bell pepper (sliced lengthways), green onion, 2 cups peanut butter, 1/2 cup honey or brown sugar, four limes, crushed chili flakes, 1/2 cup soy sauce, ginger (minced).

Method:
After slicing all your veggies, put a kettle on to boil. While you’re waiting for the water to boil, combine the peanut butter, honey, minced ginger, chili flakes,soy sauce, and the juice from the four limes in a bowl and mix it all together with a fork until smooth. Heat a bit of olive oil in a pan and fry your chicken strips. When the chicken begins to brown, add about 1/2 cup of your peanut sauce to the chicken, stirring often, making sure to leave some peanut sauce for dipping. The water should be boiled by now. Put the vermicelli noodles in a large bowl and pour the water over them until they’re covered. When the chicken is cooked all the way through, lay out all your fillings. Put some cold water on a large plate. Dip your spring roll paper in the cold water for three seconds, remove, and put on another large plate. As the paper softens and becomes sticky, fill it with whatever ingredients you want and gently roll the paper into a roll. Dip in the leftover peanut sauce and enjoy!
Tofu chow mein 
Although it will cost you a bit more than $2, this chow mein recipe is leaps and bounds above the melted peanut butter on noodles you may be used to.

Ingredients: 
A small piece of fresh ginger (minced), 3 cloves of garlic (minced), 1 chile (minced), firm tofu cut into strips, 1/4 cup peanut butter, 2 green onions, cilantro, 1 small bok choy (chopped), dry chow mein noodles, sesame oil (you can use peanut or vegetable oil if you don’t have sesame oil), 1 can of water chestnuts, soy sauce, 1 small lime.  
Method: 
Boil a pot of water. Warm up a wok or large frying pan to medium-high. When it’s hot, add a large glug of oil and tilt the pan so the oil covers the bottom. Add the chicken and stir it around until the chicken begins to brown. Add the ginger, garlic, chile, cilantro, green onions, and continue to stir the wok. Add your bok choy to the boiling water for two minutes or so and drain in a colander. Now add the peanut butter, water chestnuts with their water, soy sauce to taste, and juice from the lime to the wok. Remove from the heat, add the dry noodles and bok choy to the wok, stir the whole mixture around until the noodles are coated, and serve immediately.

If you’d like your chow mein to be a bit thicker, add a small amount of cornstarch before you remove it from the heat.  

The post Spring rolls with peanut sauce appeared first on The McGill Daily.

Hermann Hesse, The Glass Bead Game

Going Home – and I mean Home with a capital “H”; Home where your teenage fists beat holes in the drywall; Home where you cultivated an armature of acquaintances to blanket you in acceptance; Home that is dusty basement bedrooms and angsty posters; Home that is memory; Home that is family; Home that is rest – going Home is an experience nearly universal to student life, sometimes uncomfortable and sometimes surreal. This Home for me is Oshawa, Ontario (affectionately known as “the Shwa,” “the dirty Shwa,” or as the simple, unadorned syllable “Shwa”), a suburb of 150,000-odd upper-lower-middle class Canadians and the last gasp of the Golden Horseshoe heading east from Toronto. Stepping onto the platform from the train at the Oshawa station is always a shock in the winter. I brace myself against the cold and look down at the gritty concrete, bleached white by safety salt. I look out toward the city and thousands of car roofs reflect the afternoon’s dull light. They stretch nearly to the horizon where the dirty rush of the highway gives way to the bland sky.

Sometimes in the winter, if you look lengthways along the platform, the pale white of the salt-cracked concrete is the same colour as the blank winter sky just before snowfall, and they blend into each other uninterrupted. About a kilometre to the east, I see the bulky signs of a big-box store, behind them the formless, steel, almost impossibly huge buildings of the closed GM plant, with its smokeless chimneys, flanked for kilometres by parking lots with thousands of fresh cars squished bumper to bumper, so that one car can’t be moved without moving all of them. They are all the same model, utterly uniform. To me, the suburbs are like science fiction – strange and alien. I feel paralyzed by the inaccessibility of the city.

You can’t function normally in suburbia without a car, especially in the winter when it’s frigid. The sidewalks aren’t shovelled, and I live 10 minutes from the closest bus, which only comes once an hour. I can’t go to the store, visit friends, or do any activity outside the house other than shovel the driveway and walk to the park down the street, which is always empty and sad. Sometimes I go for walks at night; kill some time, get some exercise, get out of the house. Walking through a purely residential area, it’s unlikely that I would see a single person. I feel like an archaeologist sometimes, trying to find traces of life in a dead landscape. Evidence of human beings surfaces – the lights in windows, the perpetual hum of cars, the brown flowerbeds – but an actual human form is nowhere to be seen except for the garish blow-up lawn decorations of Santa Claus or plastic children skating on inflatable ice in a giant balloon approximating a snow globe. On the odd occasion, when I cross the path of another person, the terse nods we exchange feel almost perfunctory as if, even though we’re strangers, we must acknowledge each other because we’re the only two people to be seen.

Even with a car, the suburbs are no comfort. With a car you have to deal with highways like the 401 – simultaneously a congested anus of traffic and the main artery of southern Ontario. The region’s patient denizens ply that strip of cracked asphalt at a snail’s pace every day during rush hours. And I’ve seen the traffic do some nasty things. I’ve seen some of the nicest people I know reduced to snarling, swearing balls of rage, ready to smash and trample some other less-than-considerate motorists. I cringe when I start to add up a rough estimate of the hours, days, and weeks that people waste trying to get to and from work along the 401 every year: one hour each way twice a day times five days a week times four weeks a month times twelve months a year equals 480 hours equals 20 days every year! Imagine what you could do if even half of that time was reclaimed.

Thousands of people live this way throughout their adult lives. So much for seizing the moment. Then again, if your life rotates between the office where the boss breathes down your neck and home where family demands constant attention, an hour in traffic may be a welcome reprieve – some much-needed alone time. I try to imagine why anyone would design a place like this, and think that an imaginary genius, when devising the layout of the suburbs that sprawl for hours to the north, west, and east of Toronto, must have had in mind some radically new human being of the distant future. I imagine them thinking, “At some point, from the fetid, frigid ooze of Lake Ontario, there will emerge a species of humanity that will somehow have in their biological arsenal the ability to fly. So, let’s spread everything out well beyond the scale of the contemporary human being. Low population density will make public transit ineffectual and expensive. Let’s go big. Let’s go uniform. Let’s design the suburbs so that, between point A and B, there will always be rows and rows of monotonous and identical houses, streets, stores.”

In an effort to come to terms with my suburban hometown and the crippling ennui I feel whenever I return, I sat down with Professor Raphäel Fischler from McGill’s School of Urban Planning. There must be some justification for suburban living, right? He explained that the first suburbs emerged during the nineteenth century in Protestant countries like England and America. The English word suburb, just like the French banlieue and German Vorstadt, reveals that suburbia was born and developed in contradistinction to the city – as an alternative to urban living. Disgusted with the licentiousness and filth of rapidly expanding industrial cities like Manchester, the somewhat puritanical bourgeois elite sought to create havens of purity where their children could grow up free from the city’s influence. They planned these bedroom communities to ape the large estates of the landed gentry. As Fischler illustrated, “They placed single family homes well back from the roads, surrounded them with greenery, and gave each home its own driveway connecting them to the carriageway and to the city.”

They laid out the suburbs’ curvilinear street patterns to suggest a luxurious pace, mimicking the opulent mountain estates with their fresh air, inspiring scenery, and roads that followed the curve of the slope. The Montreal neighbourhoods of Westmount and Outremont are attractive today for the same reasons. Their winding streets were designed to be safe for children, eliminate noisy and dangerous thru-traffic, and ensure that any unwelcome strangers will immediately become disoriented. Plus, the property was cheap enough that one could own and control the land surrounding the house.

In the suburbs, one was free to bask in the comfort of domesticity and the nuclear family, free to control one’s own destiny. These ideas have percolated down through generations and left us with the modern suburb, explained Fischler. Of course, the scale has changed. Instead of individual houses surrounded by large properties with long driveways winding down to the road, we have sprawling labyrinths filled with uniform houses with short driveways and tiny yards. But the ideology behind the modern suburb is more or less the same, albeit without its puritanical bent. The energy of developers and residents still focuses on controlling the intensely private sphere of the nuclear family. In this sense, the notorious isolation and social homogeneity of suburbia is a good thing according to Fischler. Parents have the power to choose the peers of their children and shelter them from the city’s influence. They can surround their families with communities of like-minded people with similar backgrounds.

The suburbs of southern Ontario are far from culturally homogenous, though. The diversity of Toronto’s suburban satellites often approaches that of the city itself. Despite this, suburbia is still imagined and marketed as racially homogenous. In “Selling the Suburbs,” Katherine Perrott explains that cultural homogeneity is highlighted as a selling point – 81.7 per cent of the images advertising suburban developments contained only white models. These planned communities also tend to lack a diversity of age and socioeconomic status. Perrott notes that there are few opportunities to have a variety of incomes living in close proximity to each other. In this sense, suburban planning remains true to its roots, even if the homogenous ideal has retreated into the subconscious of most suburbanites.

Owning your own home and property also creates an outlet for showing one’s wealth. This I can attest to personally. During an unfortunate summer as a painter in Oshawa, I witnessed the suburbanites’ mania for customization and home improvement. They pour themselves into their homes. How else could you explain the hours they happily spend choosing shades of off-white paint for the walls or the perfect brand of riding lawn mower? And the value is still there. Property in the suburbs is much cheaper than in an urban core. There are, however, other indirect costs to suburban living.

One is the feeling of helplessness and isolation I feel in Oshawa, where I lose the freedom of movement that I enjoy in Montreal. Then again, the suburbs weren’t designed for people like me. With no car and no permanent job, I don’t fit, and that purposeful isolation turns from boon to bane. Fischler explained that transport has always been a problem for suburban planners. He emphasized that “good roads were always a must.”

The archetypal suburb had a conservative nuclear family in mind with one bread-winning (probably male) driver who had no problem getting to and from work via the highway. That stereotypical image we often have of the suburbs, where Valium-popping housewives go crazy with a kind of cabin fever, developed as a very gendered by-product of intentional suburban isolation. This image is fading today as people buy more and more cars. The average household in the outer suburbs of Toronto, like Oshawa, owns 1.9 vehicles, where their urban counterparts only own 1.1 vehicles per household.

Of course car culture intensified with the suburbs’ new, huge proportions. This expansion continues into the present, and car dependency has embedded itself as a fundamental, almost subconscious fact in suburbia – so much so that cafés and banks are equipped with drive-thrus and malls are spread out so far that you can’t get between two stores without driving.

A s commutes get longer and traffic more tangled, people are spending more and more time sitting in their cars, often to the detriment of their health – hardly a surprise when the only exercise you get is the walk to and from the parking lot or driveway. The Environment Health Committee of the Ontario College of Family Physicians’ “Report on Public Health and Urban Sprawl in Ontario” found frightening links between suburbia and physical and mental health.

Authors Riina Bray, Catherine Vakil, and David Elliot affirm that “Evidence clearly shows that people who live in spread-out, car-dependent neighbourhoods are likely to walk less, weigh more, and suffer from obesity and high blood pressure and consequent diabetes, cardio-vascular and other diseases.” They also establish that the lack of accessible green space in these areas negatively affects psychological well-being. In their study, Bray, Vakil, and Elliot also established that 60 per cent of residents in low-walkability neighbourhoods were overweight compared to 35 per cent in high-walkability neighbourhoods.

The health of our environment also suffers massive damage at the hands of car dependency and urban sprawl. In “Comparing High and Low Resident Density,” Jonathan Norman, Heather L. Maclean, and Christopher A. Kennedy found that in the Toronto area per capita transportation-related greenhouse gas emissions and energy use is 3.7 times higher for individuals living in low-density suburbia versus high-density urban settings. They linked this increase directly to high car dependency in the suburban fringe. Unless commuter behaviour changes, estimates predict that greenhouse gas emissions will increase 30 per cent for the greater Toronto area and 40 per cent for the Greater Golden Horseshoe (Bray, Vakil, and Elliot).

Car dependency brings with it the parking lots, malls, highways, and subdivisions that continue to swallow up fertile land to make room for more suburbanites and their cars. The number of big-box stores in the greater Toronto area almost tripled between 1998 and 2006 from 266 to 721. These are the ugly public spaces that I find so strange every time I revisit the Shwa.

The suburbs of the future may not be so ugly, though. According to Fischler, this unsightliness has been duly noted, and efforts are being made to improve it. While suburban development continues as before, some planners are moving toward putting the “urb” back in the suburbs. By concentrating more on well-designed, attractive public spaces, the suburbs of the future may bring together the best of both suburban and urban worlds. The planners designing these communities establish the norms for generations who will call them home.

Then again, today’s aging suburbs may have a gloomier fate. The baby boomers for whom they were constructed are moving into their sunset years, and young families are not buying the houses they’re leaving behind. Can you blame them? If given the choice between an older bungalow complete with newspaper insulation in the walls and a constant rash of repairs, or a recently built, insured home, the choice seems easy. New arrivals to the suburbs usually favour new development, and as a result, the older suburbs decline in value and many of these aging communities may become the slums of tomorrow. This is already a reality in cities like Los Angeles, where some of the worst neighbourhoods are technically suburban.

This may also be the fate of my hometown. Throughout its history, Oshawa developed as a bastion of southern Ontario’s once-thriving auto industry. It was the birthplace of the McLaughlin Carriage Company – later General Motors. It seems that Oshawa is doomed to endure the same slow death as GM, despite its efforts to the contrary. The General Motors plant in Oshawa cut nearly 2,000 jobs in 2008 alone. Unemployment has risen steadily in Oshawa and the surrounding towns. Right now, it stands at a staggering 9.8 per cent according to Human Resources and Skills Development Canada.

Slums or not, I know that the suburbs are not for me, even if they do regain some of their “urb.” It’s not because the suburbs are an evil, alien, or cruel place to live, but because the ideology and history in which the suburbs are couched just don’t line up with this stage in my life. I’m young. The world is mine to discover and I want to be challenged by the dynamic environment the big city offers. I don’t love my friends or family any less because they live in the suburbs. At the end of the day, they are my Home more than Oshawa ever will be.

And yet, this nagging apprehension tugs at the edges of my mind whenever someone responds to my complaints about the ‘burbs by insisting that I will want a suburban home “when I grow up.” Unlikely as that may be now, someday I might be choosing shades of off-white and trimming lawns with the best of them.

The post Trapped in the sprawl appeared first on The McGill Daily.

1. Lime-Butt Roast Chicken
Roasting is a delicious way to enjoy chicken and much cheaper than buying boneless chicken breasts. Make sure that you have a meat thermometer to check if the meat is done. You will also need a large spoon for basting, and a roasting pan large enough to cover your chicken.

Ingredients:
One whole chicken (remember that a larger chicken will take longer to cook), three limes, a head of garlic, olive oil, salt, and pepper.

Method:
Pre-heat your oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Take the chicken out of the package, hold it by the legs, and rinse it quickly under cold water. Pat the chicken all over with paper towel to dry. Take a few spoons of your olive oil and spread it over the entire chicken. Season all over with salt and pepper to taste. Next, peel your garlic cloves (I usually use about four) and cut your limes into quarters. Leaving your garlic cloves and lime quarters whole, stuff as many of them as possible into the chicken’s cavity. Stick your meat thermometer into the meatiest part of the breast. Place your chicken in the roasting pan and bake covered for about one and a half hours, basting every 20 minutes. Take the lid/foil off the pan for the last 20 minutes to make the chicken golden brown. Make sure to check your meat thermometer to see if the chicken is done. Slice and serve. Do NOT throw out the leftover bones and meat!

2. Leftover Chicken Soup
This is a delicious way to stretch your chicken purchase into two meals while reducing wasted food.

Ingredients:
Your leftover chicken frame, two bay leaves, two large carrots, one large onion, four large potatoes, two to three cups of any small noodle (my favourite is dry chow mein noodles), salt and pepper to taste. Note: If you have them, using whole peppercorns adds an extra punch to this recipe.

Method:
Roughly chop your vegetables and set aside. Place chicken frame along with any leftover meat, giblets, et cetera in a large, thick-bottomed pot. Fill the pot with water until the chicken is covered, bring to a boil, and simmer on low heat with the lid on for at least 90 minutes. The longer you let the pot simmer, the better the soup will be. Next, remove all the bones from the soup using a slotted spoon or fork, leaving the small pieces of chicken in the pot. Add the spices and vegetables, and simmer until the vegetables are tender. If you’re using normal pasta, add it when the vegetables are almost done and turn up the heat slightly. If you’re using chow mein noodles, add them right before eating. Season with salt and pepper to taste, and serve. Tip: if you find your broth a bit bland, add a chicken bouillon cube and let it simmer for an additional 10 minutes.

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1. Tomato soup from scratch:
This recipe is cheap, healthy, and almost too delicious to handle. Not to mention, of course, that garlic and tomatoes are great for the immune system.

INGREDIENTS
One package of ripe cherry tomatoes, two cans of whole plum tomatoes, three cloves of garlic (minced), one package of basil, about half a baguette (preferably stale, but fresh will do), lots of olive oil.

METHOD
Start by preheating the oven to 350 Celsius. Separate the basil leaves from the stalks, loosely chop the leaves, and finely mince the stalks. Put the cherry tomatoes in a bowl with about a quarter of the basil and one clove of minced garlic, drizzle with olive oil, and mix it all around. Next, place the cherry tomatoes on a baking sheet in the oven with all of the garlic and basil. This will intensify the tomatoes’ flavour.

In the meantime, heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a large saucepan or thick-bottomed pot and add the rest of the garlic and the basil stalks. Sauté until the garlic is lightly browned, and pour in both cans of tomatoes, and add one can of water. Break up the tomatoes with a spoon, bring to a boil, then reduce the heat and simmer for about 10 minutes.

While the soup is simmering, cut the bread into approximately two-inch-long pieces. After the 10 minutes, add the remaining basil and the bread to the pot. By this time, the cherry tomatoes should be bursting from their skins. Scrape them and all the delicious liquid in the pan into the soup. Leave the soup on low for another few minutes until the bread has dissolved somewhat and the whole thing is thick. Serve piping hot.

2. Apple cinnamon yams:
An apple a day keeps the doctor away, plus the beta carotene in the yams is good for you.

INGREDIENTS
Yams (the orange ones; sweet potatoes are white in colour), 3 tablespoons butter/margarine, cinnamon, grated apple (firm Granny Smith apples work really well), a splash of milk if you like it smooth, optional brown sugar for those of us with a sweet tooth.

METHOD
You can heat the yams in the oven in tin-foil for an hour on 375 Celsius to soften them up, but that takes forever, so I usually microwave them for between five and 10 minutes (depending on the size of the yam). It makes no difference whether you peel them before or after. Grate the apple using a normal cheese grater. The recipe is very simple. Add everything together, mash until desired consistency, and enjoy.

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INGREDIENTS
Latkes – 1 cup rinsed basmati rice, 1/2 cup red lentils, 1/2 tsp tumeric (substitute mustard powder if you want), sesame or peanut oil, 1 tsp cumin, 2 cups diced onions, 1/4 tsp red pepper flakes, corn starch.

Chutney – 1 cup cilantro, 1/4 cup coconut milk, 2 tbsp fresh lemon juice, 1 jalepeno without stem, 1 small, peeled garlic clove, 1-inch knob of peeled ginger, salt to taste.

METHOD
Latkes – Place the rice, lentils, tumeric/mustard powder, and salt into a pot with 4 cups of water. Cover and bring to a boil, uncover, and simmer without stirring until all the water is absorbed (15 minutes or so). Meanwhile, heat a glug of oil in a small frying pan, add the cumin and sauté until fragrant, add the onions, and cook them over medium heat until they are well-browned.

Remove from heat, add the red pepper flakes, and then add to the lentils. Combine very well and cool the whole mixture in the fridge for about 20 minutes. After it has cooled, take it out of the fridge, heat about a centimetre of oil in your pan (not too hot! Keep it around medium.), spread a layer of corn starch on a large plate or cutting board, form the mixture into patties, and evenly coat both sides. Place the patties into the oil and flip when they are browned on one side. Serve them warm with the chutney on the side.

Chutney – While that is cooling, make the chutney. Combine all the ingredients in a food processor or blender. If you don’t have one of these, you can chop up all the ingredients as fine as you can make them and then combine them all. Blend it all together until it is the consistency of runny oatmeal.

2. Wilted Spinach Salad with Almonds and Honey Garlic Vinaigrette:

INGREDIENTS
One bag (about 10 oz) of spinach, 2 cups of thinly sliced mushrooms, 3 diced garlic cloves, 1/4 cup of almonds, 1 green onion (thinly sliced), 2 tbsp cider vinegar, 2 tsp honey, olive oil.

METHOD
Combine the spinach, mushrooms, and almonds in a large pot. Drizzle a small amount of olive oil over top, and put on very low heat while you’re preparing the dressing, stirring occasionally. Sauté the green onion and garlic in oil with lots of salt and pepper until browned. Add the vinegar and stir until the sharp vinegar smell has lessened somewhat, remove from heat, and add the honey.

Make sure that there is enough oil and vinegar to coat the spinach sufficiently. By this time, the spinach and mushrooms should have lost most of their mass and wilted. Spoon the spinach mixture onto a plate and pour the dressing over top. Serve immediately.

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Ingredients: 2 cups wide scoobi-doo or egg noodles, 1/4 cup butter, 1/2 cup chopped onion, 1/4 cup flour, 3/4 tsp basil, 1 1/2 tsp salt, 3 cups milk, 1/4

cup grated parmesean cheese, 2 cans tuna, 1/2 cup breadcrumbs.

 
Method: Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit. Cook and drain noodles. In the meantime, melt the butter in a saucepan, sauté the onions until they’re translucent, blend in flour, salt and basil, gradually stir in milk, and boil the whole thing until it thickens.

Remove from heat, add cheese until well combined, and put in an oven-safe casserole dish. Fold in noodles and tuna. Sprinkle the breadcrumbs all over the top until well coated. Place in the oven for 20-25 minutes or until brown on top. Enjoy!

Ricotta and vegetable linguine:

What student diet would be complete without a hefty serving of pasta? To keep it healthy, you might want to substitute the linguine with healthier (and subsequently more expensive) soba noodles. You may also want to go with lower-fat ricotta cheese to keep tabs on your fat intake.

 
Ingredients: 1 pkg. linguine, 1 regular-sized container of ricotta cheese, garlic, green beans, cherry tomatoes (if these are out of season/too expensive, use regular, fresh tomatoes cut into small cubes), salt and pepper to taste.

 
Method: Boil water and add linguine. Cook until tender. In the meantime, cut the beans in half and sauté them with garlic in a bit of olive oil until they’re a bit more tender, but still crunchy. Drain the linguine when it’s done and leave a bit of pasta-water in the pot (approx. 1-2 cups).

 Put the linguine back into the pot with the pasta-water, and add the entire container of ricotta cheese. The water should bond with the cheese to make a creamy sauce.

Now halve the cherry tomatoes and add them to the pot so they warm up in the creamy goodness. Add the green beans and garlic to everything else, mix everything up, and serve. Again, the pasta keeps in the fridge for a few days, so make a lot to have it later for lunch/snacks.    

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French (Canadian) Onion Soup:
This is a classic. Just a warning, though: this is a slow-food recipe, and depending on how much you make, it may take awhile (45 minutes or longer).

Ingredients: A stick of butter, 5 medium-sized yellow onions (you can get sacks of onions for cheap from Segal’s at Duluth and St. Laurent), sugar, beef (veggie) stock, salt and pepper, a bottle of Québec-brewed wheat beer (e.g. Maudite, Cheval Blanc, Fin du Monde, and there are many more), that rock-hard, crusty baguette that has inevitably been sitting on your counter for a week (cut into medium-large cubes), and cheddar cheese for the top.

Method: Put on your favourite French Canadian music, open your beer and take a long swig, and warm your largest, thick-bottomed pot over medium low heat. Melt about half of the butter. In the meantime, chop all of your onions – brace yourself, it’ll bring tears to your eyes – but not too finely. Sauté the onions until they are golden brown and carmelized (they will be roughly the colour of carmel). Reduce heat and simmer ten minutes, add 4 cups of beef (veggie) stock and one cup of water. Add about half a cup of your beer – but don’t add too much or it will make the soup taste skunky. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and simmer uncovered for 20 minutes. Add cubes of your baguette, and serve piping hot. When I’m cooking for a lot of people, I double the recipe. Enjoy!
Cantonese Corn Soup:
This recipe is super cheap and delicious. The sweet corn and the ginger are wonderful together. You can make this with chicken, but we usually make it vegetarian.

Ingredients: 400 g canned cream corn, 6 cups stock (chicken, preferably, or veggie), salt to taste, 2.5 tablespoons corn starch, a hefty amount of ginger, 2 egg whites (lightly beaten), 2 teaspoons sesame oil, 250 g skinless chicken breast, minced.

Method: There are two ways to make this recipe. The first is to sauté the chicken (if you’re using it) until it’s no longer pink in the middle, then add all the ingredients in a crock pot, set to medium or low (depending on how long you want to wait), and leave it in the pot long enough for the eggs to be cooked completely. The second way is the same, only without a crock pot. Sauté the chicken in a little bit of oil until cooked, add everything else, and simmer uncovered on low to medium-low heat for about 20 minutes or until the desired thickness is reached.

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1. Indian-style Roasted Corn (Roasted Bhutta): 
Street vendors sell this dish during one of my favourite summer festivals, and the natural sweetness of the corn mixed with the spicy and sour flavours of the seasoning is absolutely delicious. Corn is also extremely cheap, and you can find it everywhere this time of year. 

Ingredients:
 Whole ears of corn, 1 lemon or lime per ear of corn, olive oil, salt, pepper, cayenne pepper.

Method:
Shuck the corn, making sure that all of the hairs are removed. Ideally, you would rub the corn with olive oil and roast it over a barbecue or in the oven at 350 degrees Fahrenheit until it is golden all over; if you’d prefer to boil the corn, no oil is necessary. To check if the corn is cooked, stick a fork in it. The kernels should be soft. While the corn is cooking, halve the lemons/limes, and combine all the spices on a plate. Adjust the amount of cayenne pepper to taste. When the corn is done cooking, take a half of lemon/lime, dip it in the spices, and rub it all over the corn. Repeat as necessary, and serve right away.

2. Green Bean Salad with Feta:
At the end of every summer, my garden at home overflows with green beans. This salad is crunchy, fresh, and a delicious way to use those superabundant beans.

Ingredients: 
350 grams trimmed green beans, 1 chopped red onion, chopped cilantro, 2 thinly sliced radishes, 3/4 cup crumbled feta cheese, 1 tsp oregano, 2 tbsp balsamic or cider vinegar, 5 tbsp olive oil (preferably extra virgin), 1 large tomato cut into wedges, salt, and pepper. 

Method: 
Bring about 4 cm of water to a boil in a large pot. While the water is heating, trim the ends off your beans and rinse them in a metal colander. Steam the beans by placing the colander in the pot. Steam until just tender (about five minutes). Transfer the beans to a bowl and add the onion, cilantro, radishes, crumbled feta, oregano, and tomatoes. In a separate bowl, combine the oil, vinegar, and salt and pepper to taste. Pour over the vegetables, and toss gently until well combined. You can eat the salad warm or chilled. This will keep in the fridge for a few days.  

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