Week 43: Cross-Border Shopping in Buffalo/Niagara, New York

I've been listening to people boast about cross-border shopping for years now and how great it is with the deals and variety.  I absolutely love to shop!  Every weekend I go shopping and look forward to it as my highlight of the week.  It's my naughty little pleasure.  It's also a bit tricky to keep up this habit when you're frugal.  I seem to make it work though.

I've traveled to many places around the world but I've never driven to the U.S.  For some unknown reason I had this picture in my mind that once you crossed the bridge and entered New York, a huge bustling Buffalo metropolis would swallow you up or something.  That's why I've avoided going there all these years even though it's only about a two hour drive or less.  Anyway, now that I've been there I can totally say with experienced confidence that it's more like driving in the boonies than a booming city.

I think the key is to leave early in the morning because of the line-ups at the border.  We left at 7am but still had to wait about 30-45min. to get through.  It felt like hours though.

Once passed the border we drove a short distance along the highway and exited off for the Fashion Outlets.  This mall has over a hundred shops and restaurants, some inside one main building and many more outside in a strip mall format.  I wasn't overly impressed with this place.  Other than Tim Hortons, the food court was fairly disappointing and offered similar types of food.  For clothing, they had your typical stores but the prices weren't that great.  I bought a pair of jeans at the Gap and was shocked to see that they only charge 4% sales tax!!!  That's insane compared to the tax we pay.

We had lunch at Chili's (I was pleasantly surprised) and then checked out the Target nearby.  To be perfectly honest, I didn't see much difference between our Target stores and theirs.  Aside from paying less tax, the prices are the same.  Although, they had an excellent selection of flavoured packaged coffee (unlike ours which stocks the shelves with varieties of fair trade blends).  I went for gold and bought Dunkin' Donuts Strawberry Shortcake flavoured coffee.  I would never find something like that here.  It's quite good, by the way.  Also, there's no Starbucks in this particular Target store.  I'm not sure if it's just Canadian Target stores that have Starbucks?  After Target we tried out a T.J. Maxx.  I describe this store as a Winners clearance store.  Oh what fun we had here.  You have to search through a lot of "interesting" racks but I found a neat and different top.  Jeans, coffee, and a top, $55 in total...  that was my big shopping extravaganza.

Returning home was relatively uneventful with the exception of the extra cranky I-hate-the-world-and-everyone-in-it Canada border services officer.  I was ready for him with my receipts in hand and bags by my side.  But, I guess he just wanted to make us feel uncomfortable and anxious as he drilled us with questions and then accused us of lying.  Oh well, he let us go anyway.  I hope we made his miserable day a bit more doom and gloomy.

Would I go back?  Definitely!  Now that I know that the U.S. won't swallow me up, I can check out the stores I missed and even try one or two alternate malls.  My plan is to book a night or two in Niagara Falls, USA and make a weekend of shopping, playing slots, and checking out the falls from the New York side.  Four percent sales tax - I still can't get over it!

Week 42: Food and More Food!

To say that I've come a long way since the beginning with my cooking abilities would, in my opinion, be an understatement.  I admit I'm no Martha Stewart (I wouldn't last 5 min. in prison) or Rachel Ray (Nor do I have that sexy throaty voice), but before now making myself dinner would entail the brainy decision of which frozen meal to take out of the freezer.  The thought of eating one of those frozen entrees now is kind of yucky.

It was brought to my attention that I wasn't eating enough calories or protein.  I thought that because I wasn't working I didn't need to eat as much; so I skipped breakfast and jumped to lunch.  I rarely had snacks and some days I had little to no protein in my diet.  No wonder I was hungry all the time.  Now I eat three meals a day plus snacks, and try to include a protein with each.  It's easy to have an egg at breakfast and some kind of meat with dinner, but lunch?  The leader at Weight Watchers (I call her "The Golden Girl" because she's been a member of Weight Watchers longer than I've been alive!) suggested that I poach chicken breasts and use them throughout the week with lunch.  That's what I did.  The first time I even made a reduction sauce out of the broth.  However, I poached chicken for two weeks straight until I couldn't stand it because it started to smell like feet.  That's when I bought turkey breast slices and decided to cook it on the stove in my saucepan with some hot salsa I had in the cupboard.  By accident half the jar emptied into the pan but it still worked out fine.  It was much better than the feet smelling poached chicken.  Here's a picture of it:

Turkey Breast Slices with Hot Salsa

I grew up on mostly potatoes, peas, carrots, and turnips.  As an adult I tend to stay away from them.  I really like asparagus and eggplant.  So I went out and bought some.  I quickly looked up on the Internet simple ways to prepare them.  The asparagus I roasted in the oven with a bit of drizzled oil and chili powder, and the eggplant was grilled in the oven and later made into a stir fry with shrimp.  Today, in fact, I blanched some asparagus for a stir fry I plan to make with catfish.  I'll keep you posted on that one.  If this turns out to be my last post you'll know the fish went deadly wrong.  The picture below is my roasted asparagus with brown rice (my first time making rice, by the way) and meatloaf.  I didn't make the meatloaf.  It was good!

Brown Rice & Roasted Asparagus

I'm a big fan of sauces and I love Asian food.  I bought some sauces to use when cooking such as sweet chili, honey hoisin, sweet and sour, and Thai peanut sauce.  The photo below is my shrimp and eggplant stir fry with sweet chili sauce on brown rice.  It was delicious.

Shrimp & Eggplant Sweet Chili Stir-fry on Brown Rice

The more I cook the more adventurous I'm becoming.  I love chili and wanted to make a healthy version of one.  Again, I quickly looked up a simple recipe on the Internet and whipped it up.  I changed a few ingredients to make it more suitable to me but it was another success.  I have to admit I made an impressive batch of chili for my first time.

Chili with Ground Chicken

I had some leftover ground chicken from the chili so I decided to use it with pasta.  Weight Watchers encourages people to use whole grains so I bought whole wheat macaroni.  To be honest, I don't really find much of a difference, unlike brown rice which is like the dried up cardboard version of white rice.  I didn't mean to make this much pasta.  I only used half a cup but it grew into a plate full.  I didn't make my own pasta sauce.  It's the cheapest tomato sauce the grocery store offered.  I fried up the ground chicken and heated the sauce in the same pan with the meat, added a bit of cayenne pepper for some spicy heat and that was it.  It might not look it but it too was quite good.

Whole Wheat Macaroni with Ground Chicken & Tomato Sauce

Tonight I'm having something quite different.  I'm going to make that catfish and asparagus stir fry with hoisin and peanut sauce, and try it on some macaroni.  The catfish was on sale because it was dated best before today but I'm sure I'll be fine, right?  Keep your fingers crossed for me.  Time to cook!

Week 41: Volunteer Work with Alzheimer's Disease & Nursing Home Residents

Another item on my list of things to accomplish while off this year was to volunteer somewhere in the city.  As best as I can remember, I've never done any volunteer work in Toronto other than extra-curricular activities through my profession.  I started the search on the Internet many months ago and found the list of possibilities to be quite lengthy.  I narrowed down the search by location, duration, and then came the hardest part of all...  the position itself.  Being a people person, I knew the position had to involve working with others.  Initially, I had a rule that whatever volunteer work I chose it would definitely not be working with the elderly.  It takes very special people to do that job.  I can barely watch a TV commercial with sick and frail seniors,  let alone spend the day with them.  It's so heart breaking.  It would have been easier to choose a volunteer position working with children.  That's what I do.  But, after some thought I decided to do the one thing I said I wouldn't do - work with the elderly. Ultimately, it's only after accomplishing the challenging things in life that empower us to continue battling life's further hardships.

So, I found a position entitled "Friendly Visitor" with the Salvation Army that suited my location and duration preferences.  I emailed the coordinator as per the ad and went for an interview.  During the interview I was given a tour of the facility and met some of the residents.  It actually gave me a good idea of what the position would entail.  I had to complete a police check, give two references, and have a TB test done.  This entire process took approximately a month.  My first official volunteer day was yesterday.

I agreed to a 6 hour shift from 9am-3pm.  It was quite shocking to the system to wake up at 6am once again.  I've been going to bed at 1am and sleeping till 11 or 12pm every day.  Actually, it was good practice for when I return to work in September.  So this is how my shift went:  completed more paperwork, watched a video on feeding residents at mealtime, assisted residents in transitioning to and from their respective rooms/floors to the main lobby for church service as well as helped turn pages in the hymn book during church service, aided feeding residents at lunchtime, supported a staff member in running two activity groups, and completed 3 friendly visits.  Yes, it was as tiring as it sounds.  It's called "work" for a reason, right?  But, it was also a very good day.  I found the entire experience to be quite enlightening.  First of all, I ignorantly thought that all people with Alzheimer's Disease would be the same.  They are no different than any other random group of people.  Some are sociable, warm, friendly,  and some are disagreeable, unresponsive, and cranky.  You have to get to know each person as an individual.  Secondly, I learned that you can apply various teaching skills to many challenging positions involving people.  I don't know if this volunteer job is similar to my teaching job or that the skills needed are the same.  Either way, they were quite parallel.  And lastly, I realized that you can do any job with the right mindset.  So many times I have said these words, "I don't know how she/he could do that job?"  Well, I discovered that you CAN do just about any job you set your mind to by simply doing it.  I never would have thought that I would be feeding Alzheimer's residents on my year off.  But, once I started the whole process and walked through those doors, it was all business.  It is very hard work and I take my hat off to the staff.  Yet, I've heard many people tell me that they couldn't do my Special Ed. job either.  We really are most powerful when we are determined to achieve something.

My plan is to continue volunteering once a week from now until the end of June.  By the end of this month I will find out what my new teaching assignment will be for September.  I'll need the summer, at least, to prepare for it.  I hope that this volunteering experience will somehow make me a better teacher or person.  It's not that I'm horribly awful or anything, but we could all use a little improvement, right?

Week 40: Target vs. Zellers

Can you remember your first official job?  I say official because taking out the garbage or cleaning your room for an allowance does not count.  I will always remember mine.  I was very excited to turn 16 so that I could get a job and have my own spending money for whatever I wanted.  My grandmother was the personnel manager at Zellers at the time so I begged her to give me a job in the record department.  I loved music and thought it would be the best department to work in.  It turned out to be just that.  I worked in the record department at Zellers part time throughout my high school years until I graduated and moved out of town for university.  I will always look back fondly on that store and be grateful for the opportunity my grandmother gave me.

As you can guess, I was sad to hear that Zellers was closing.  I had never been to a Target store so I had little idea what to expect.  Finally, after much talk and anticipation a Target store recently opened in my area.  So off I went to explore and compare.  I'm sure every Target is similar but not identical so this description is based on the one store I've been to thus far.

I find Target to be like a combination of Winners, Zellers, and Walmart wrapped into one.  For instance, the housewares dept. reminded me of Winners, whereas the clothing area looked like Zellers and the food section Walmart.  The women's clothing dept. was quite limited, which was disappointing, but a few of the juniors tops resembled some I've seen at American Eagle only less costly.  They also had some Roots clothing (what you'd see at Sears) at reduced prices than the Roots store.  I'm unsure if all Target stores are like this one but this particular store had many grocery items from fresh to frozen, excluding fresh produce and deli.  From what I saw, Target's grocery products are less expensive than the main grocery stores such as Sobeys and Loblaws.

There were really only two things that set Target apart from the other big stores.  1. Starbucks  2. Target MasterCard or bank card that allows you save 5% on every purchase.  I like the idea of Starbucks.  But, another card to weigh down my wallet?  The discount sounds nice and all but think about it...  that's only $5 for every $100 you spend.  I don't plan on spending that much at Target.  I'd rather bite the bullet and go to Walmart to get my groceries and miscellaneous items.

Overall, I don't think that Target is the new and improved Zellers.  It's just the end of an era and beginning to another.  I will continue my quest to visit more Target stores to try to get a better idea of what all the hype is about.  What's next to be "Targeted"?  Sears?  The Bay?  Don't say our beloved Dollarama?!