100% genuine gossip, sourced by Our Woman in Hastings County. Information provided for entertainment purposes only, keep it to yourself. Previous installments can be found here and here.
Which propane company has been undercutting the competition by not charging HST? Shouldn’t have expanded so far off the Mohawk reservation, the competition must have dropped a dime on them to the tax man, but you can always count on them to show up, and those prices can’t be beat. If Revenue Canada thinks they can retroactively extract 13% from the customers, they have another thing coming.
*
Who drank our columnist’s father’s homemade cucumber-infused gin which was SUPPOSED to be consumed exclusively by said columnist? She didn’t mind someone trying it, but that stuff can’t exactly be shipped to her, get your claws out of it. We hear it was a middle-aged woman with gray hair, but everyone in that family looks alike anyway.
*
A certain classic farmhouse finally “has air”! Negotiations about when “the air” should be turned on continue to be quite heated. Is it cooler outside than in? Do you think we can get by with opening the windows? Should we wait until the dryer has stopped running? It’s like the African Queen in that laundry room!
*
Which queer community activist in her sixties is suspicious that the old septic guy never really cleaned the tank, just signed the paperwork? The new guy says the tank is under her back deck, there’s no way he was able to access it without tearing up some boards. People used to take their jobs seriously, they used to have pride in their work. I ask you.
*
What columnist’s mother decided no one could use the well water tap to brush their teeth? It had been fine for a year, but now “there’s a taste to it.” The taste is maple keys from the trees around the house. Stop complaining, and use a sharpie to mark your initial on this bottle of water.
*
A mother remarkably similar to the mother in the previous blind item, who is being unwillingly tapped to serve a leadership role in the Catholic Women’s League allowed her daughter to watch The History of the Eagles in her presence for the ninth time. One of these nights! One of these crazy nights.
*
Whose recipe for quinoa chicken chili fed everyone at the family reunion? Everyone loved it, but our sources say that three cups of chicken stock made it a little TOO wet. Maybe try a little more quinoa! Heats up like a dream the next day.
Tags: adventures in propane, blind items, canadian content, gossip, southern ontario, weird true tales
As a (temporary) resident of the South(ish) West(ish) US I have become an honorary member of the Chili Police, and I must protest this grievance. Just as there is no crying in baseball, there is no quinoa in chili, and black beans are really toeing the line.
I’m fine with beans in chili, but quinoa DOES NOT BELONG IN CHILI. You can put it over rice if you have to, but I don’t care if quinoa is healthier IT IS NOT FOR CHILI USAGE.
Everybody ate it, so, protest denied!
A bunch of Canadians ate it. They’ve probably never had real Texas or New Mexico chili in their lives. That’s like passing off freezer deep dish as Chicago-style pizza on a bunch of Japanese tourists: they might like the food, and it vaguely resembles the genuine article, but it’s so different that it doesn’t deserve the name.
Maybe this person should rename their dish “Deep South(ern Ontario) Chili.”
Lord help anyone who utters the phrase “white chili” around my mother, which sends her flying into a blind rage over how it most certainly is not chili. This has absolutely nothing to do with the fact that she lost her office chili cook-off to a white chili multiple years in a row. Nothing at all.
what even is white chili though, I mean really
Even I, who was raised to believe that fights over the authenticity of chili is a sign that the chili is inauthentic,* feel the line may be drawn at a chili that doesn’t involve chili powder.
*The reasoning among my Texas family is as follows: chili/chili con carne is ranch food and therefore it is traditionally made with whatever is on hand and you’d better believe what was on hand usually included beans and corn and whatnot. Especially whatnot.
If it doesn’t have a heaping helping of whatnot, it’s just NOT chili in my book.
As a permanent resident of the South(yes) West(definitely) US I can attest to the fact that no-one cares. Chili is just a bunch of junk you put in a pot and set over a fire while the real wranglers do real work.
Amen to this, but as a Californian sometimes-hippy.
You totally just made the point I was trying to make above, only better. Should have read this first.
This needs to needlepointed in reverse into the forehead of every chili bore who goes on about how they do it in San Antonio or whatever, so that they can read it whenever they look in the mirror.
I once had chili where someone had put canned baked beans in it, and this is an abomination unto the Lord.
What New England woman is impressed that someone managed to feed their parents quinoa without them whining like toddlers with grey hair?
I once made a Tuscan kale salad to serve at a bbq at my parents’ house and was massaging the leaves when my father walked into the kitchen.
“What are you doing, Hillary?”
“Massaging the kale.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s a pretty tough green and this breaks it down a bit.”
“If you have to massage it to make it edible, it probably shouldn’t be eaten.”
He then strolls out of the room with a big, smug smile on his face. And ate two servings of the salad no less than thirty minutes later.
SCANDALOUS (faints dead away)
In a fantastic collision of Rural Southern Ontarioana, my mom was convinced for years that the septic tank was leaking into the well SOMEHOW, despite being on literally opposite sides of the property. I think it was just an excuse to complain about two things at once? I respect the multitasking!
I just got back from a whole weekend of septic tank “issues” in rural southern ontario. It was a whole weekend of this type of discussion:
We called the company to clean the septic tank but, you know, his son has taken over now and you know that his father used to be so thorough, but young men these days aren’t nearly so reliable and your grandmother heard that he was thinking of selling the business and moving to the city.
Who is going to stay home from the market in case he comes by tomorrow morning? We wouldn’t want to miss him.
And do you really think it’s a good idea to plan a BBQ for tomorrow? What if he isn’t done? You wouldn’t want to be BBQing if the tank was still open on the other side of the (2 acre) lot.
I wish it was still called “Revenue Canada” but now it is the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA). I preferred Revenue Canada, it went with Parks Canada, Health Canada, Transport Canada, Industry Canada etc etc.
I need to try that recipe now!
Sugar wash?!
This is… a lot like what blind items in my county would look like.
A lot.
Ohhhhh I love these. I can’t get enough of small-town gossip. My mom and step dad’s town has been having an incredibly local battle about a boat for YEARS and I’m like, *chin hands* no, tell me more!! The neighbors put up a stop-the-boat sign, you say? We are team float-the-boat even though the boat’s owner was once rude to mom? Yes, glorious, I must have more.
Then I go home to my impersonal city life. Ideal!!
A single boat? One boat?
One single boat!
A LARGE single boat, though. The guy wants to rent it as a wedding space.
I would read this article although I worry you wouldn’t be able to maintain your anonymity.
Isn’t it considered unsafe to cook frozen meat in a crockpot without thawing it? On the theory that it will spend too long in the danger zone, though since it’s going to follow that up by being heated to germ-killing temperatures, I admit I don’t really understand the problem. And if I did I would probably have to change how I cook brown rice, which would be upsetting.
I think I’m maybe just being a jerk here because of the #stopeatingcrap in the recipe intro. I will eat “crap” if I want to, dangit.
I think the guidelines recently changed to say it’s ok. I have no idea why, but I’ve always cooked frozen meat in the crockpot so now I feel vindicated.
I just heard someone on the radio this weekend talking about thawing meat in hot water, like 100F. It thaws quickly enough there isn’t time for bacteria to get active. This may be similar.
As a southern transplant in Ontario, I call bullshit on the Rotel in the recipe (pictured). That stuff’s like, $7/can on amazon.ca. And you know that something so expensive isn’t “serviceable,” you know it, Nicole Cliffe. I ask you.
Ok, but what if you had someone visiting from Utah who planned so far in advance that they brought the Rotel with them?
I have relatives that practically live on the US-Canada border and I frequently get calls saying ‘Hey, we’re going to the States, you want anything?’ (Yes, and it’s usually Rotel).
America – Canada’s megastore.
That Rotel tomatoes with green chilies is so darn useful I feel so sorry for them not having it in their grocery stores.
Next time I am in the south I am going to buy ALL the cans of boiled peanuts to bring back to Canada, a boiled peanut free culinary wasteland.
As an American i have never heard of or used either boiled peanuts or Rotel tomatoes. Is it possible that these are things that are only purchasable in the US and only used in Canada?
With my grandmother it was always copper cleaner. And my aunt wanted prune juice. (Because people in Canada don’t get constipated?)
Why can’t the gin be shipped to our columnist, though?
I’m sure the quinoa thing was delicious, but it ain’t chili.
As my dad would say, (and did say about eleventy million times) “if your cat has kittens in the oven, that doesn’t make them muffins”
You aren’t Vicky Austin, are you?!? I swear I learned that expression from one of the L’Engle Austin family books. In which case, omg, dolphins.
If your cat has kittens in the oven, for the love of God, take them out! That’s dangerous! I know I don’t check the oven before turning it on. (I should start checking the oven before turning it on.)
legit looking in my oven for kittens and/or muffins
We have that saying, too! (Except “biscuits”, instead of muffins).
I ask you!!!
All my life living with my folks we had to drink the well water even though it tasted (and looked) terrible during spring runoff. They got a big ole water cooler. I’m pretty sure they told me that when they tore down the old house and put up the new one (which they didn’t tell me about until after the teardown had begun. MY CHILDHOOD HOME GONE with no advance warning) that as part of the planning/permit process the well water was tested and proved to be not quite potable.
Other thing they have acquired since my brother and I moved out: a satellite dish. All my contemporaries nostalgize of things like Ready Or Not and I have never seen is, as the show did not air on one of the two channels we could get with the antenna.
we called satellite dishes “West Virginia Wildflowers”, and my dad would cackle saying “the ones going straight up are tuned to the Playboy Channel!”
Dads.
A+ dad joke.
I’ve spent a lot of time driving around rural upstate NY, and my mom and I always joke about all the satellite dishes that are bigger than the house.
My Dad might like your Dad. My Dad convinced us when we were very young that steel wool came from steel wool sheep. Would your Dad appreciate this?
This is a true story:
Posted in our local, rural paper under “local council news” for 3 weeks running, it was the sordid tale of embattled neighbours and an open deck hot tub. To whit: hot tub parties that went beyond the 10:00pm mark AND were breaking the village’s noise bylaws (according to opposing, hot tub owners and subsequent police reports, these raucous get togethers were (a) exaggerated and complaining neighbour was just jealous of their hot tub and (b) there was never more than 3 or 4 in it at a time and everyone was out before well before midnight).
This hot tub war culminated in numerous council meeting negotiations with hot tub owners AND a criminal charge for non-hot tub neighbour because, in a fit of pique, she assaulted her hot tub neighbours by spraying them with her garden hose. Charges were subsequently dropped.
I followed this with such fu**ing glee, honest to God. I only wish I knew how it ended: did the hot tub neighbours “tone it down”? Were there any other attempts of hot tub sabotage?
I wish there was a website where people could post stuff like this because I would be following the news every day.
Oh but there is! Where I live there is a neighborhood app called Nextdoor that’s basically Facebook for nosy Nancy’s. I was glued to it when I was pretty much housebound with my newborn son. Shit is cray! I live in an older neighborhood in transition; old people and lots of stay at home moms,nothing goes unnoticed. “Strange cars” driving 33mph in a 30 zone get blurry pics of their car/license plate posted. Suspicious people selling magazines, instantly on neighborhood blast. Omg, someone’s tenants in a rental were selling meth, it was like a telenovela. On the upside, almost everyone here makes more money than I do and they are always selling good quality stuff for cheap or giving stuff away. And I can leave my doors unlocked when I run to the store.
I totally forgot about Nextdoor! I checked it out and you are absolutely correct!
Case in point:
My local classifieds flyer (because I live in a place that still has a special flyer unassociated with the newspaper for classified ads) has a feature where people can put in anonymous “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” notes with a little graphic and a line or two of pure, concentrated small town passive-aggressiveness. People call out their neighbours for burning out of season, shop workers for being rude, and friends for flirting inappropriately or having affairs. It’s beautiful.
Highlights of this week: “A zillion thumbs up to [name]. Your resilience is noted. If you can’t get a ride, you can walk just fine! Some healthy people can’t even walk to bingo”
“Thumbs down to the person who solicits money selling the idea that they are going on an educational trip when truly they go on a holiday. Sad but true”
“A whole neighbourhood’s thumbs down to the old bag who thinks she can party like a rockstar! There are babies and elders who had to tolerate your music blasting all hours of the night! Grow up and have some respect!”
Oh, and the last few weeks have had running thumbs-up/thumbs-down arguments over dandelions next to roadways.
Oh my gosh, people. They aren’t so bad here.
The NY Daily News has a “voice of the people” section which usually is just racist letters and inaccurate reminiscing about the “good old days”. But sometimes there are some gems – like one lady who wrote in to publicly shame the person who stole things out of her grocery cart and upon whom she put “an Irish hex”; or a week-long series of responses about why female newscasters wear short sleeves in the winter.
Ooh, we had that, too! Called “Bouquets or Boos” or something like that and it ALWAYS included a rude (BOO!) salesperson. It was like rural Yelp, only without the anonymity because WE KNOW WHO YOU ARE, IT’S SO OBVIOUS RICK.
The salesperson complaints mostly dried up when someone started a “customer service review” Facebook page and they all went there. It was at the peak drama at the beginning, when it was mostly complaints and then the business owners or their friends and family would come on and argue back (“You neglected to mention that I wouldn’t give you a return on that shirt because it was covered in dog hair, DENISE. I AM NOT GOING TO TAKE SOMETHING BACK AS UNWORN WHEN IT’S FILTHY!”). Now, sadly, the first reply to any complaints usually tells the complainer to take it to management and keep it off Facebook so it’s mostly positive.
Glory be I want to read this and I am SO GLAD we don’t have it were I live.
Which wildlife sanctuary has been capturing, treating and then releasing sick or injured raccoons and deer, which, now habituated to humans, now terrorize local vegetable gardens and garbage cans?
We have a local paper that just appears on our driveway once a week. There’s a lot about local athletics and club news, so pretty boring, generally. But once they wrote in detail about a local mosque’s expansion discussion at the town hall meeting and it was fantastic. (This is in NJ, btw.) There were, of course, a couple of islamophobic cranks who had things to get off their chest and to me, that was sadly expected. However, I had a big old smile while reading about the neighbor to the mosque who said he just didn’t want headlights shining in his windows at night, so could they please design the spaces in the parking lot accordingly. Local governance at its best.
I can relate to the septic tank thing, because I always wonder if the auto shop *really* changed my oil. I mean, how would I really know ?
(Just pull out the dipstick the next morning before you drive, and it should look like like syrup, instead of chocolate sauce 😉
This is like if Alice Munro was a vicious gossip AND I LOVE IT.
I want to be a pedant about “another thing coming” but I’m not sure if it’s part of the schtick.
also chili has beans in it or it’s just fancy spaghetti sauce *runs*
This comments section:
Person: Socrates I know your experience with cooking is mostly theoretical.
Socrates: It is. I will admit that my pastry baking example in the Gorgias was not based on my personal experience but on the observation of others.
Person: But I was wondering if I could ask you a question anyway. Do you think that quinoa chicken chili would be good?
Socrates: What is chili? Can it contain quinoa?
Why would anyone RUIN perfectly good gin (was it perfectly good? Australians want to know) with a dreaded CUCUMBER.
A CUCUMBER.
IN YOUR GIN.
A while ago my hometown was having a big debate over whether or not people should have chickens because of the noise. It got really heated and took up our paper’s letter section for a few weeks. The guy who originally filed the complaint about his neighbor’s chickens was consulted later and his response was, “Oh I just hate roosters, I have no problem with chickens.”
I now have ‘One of These Nights’ firmly embedded in my brain.
(Also this is pretty much like a more-interesting Blind Items of Rural Central Wisconsin.)
This needs to needlepointed in reverse into the forehead of every chili bore who goes on about how they do it in San Antonio or whatever, so that they can read it whenever they look in the mirror.
Our neighborhood listserve is my favorite thing EVER. Highlights:
-someone stealing from the local supermarket because the service is so bad, him being roundly chastised, someone else on the listserve comparing him to Ghandi, yet another person pointing out that Okra Tom probably would not get away with that if he wasn’t white.
-Someone offering sodastream flavoring packets they don’t need, a twenty page digression into the nuances of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
-A dog park proposal that turned into a diatribe against all millenials because of someone who supported the dog park but was angry that she had not been personally consulted and the “process” had not been respected due to millenial arrogance.
Reading this with glee, and wishing that my neighbourhood had a listserv.
http://www.popville.com/2014/06/takoma-dc-listser…
I once had chili where someone had put canned baked beans in it, and this is an abomination unto the Lord.
Next time I am in the south I am going to buy ALL the cans of boiled peanuts to bring back to Canada, a boiled peanut free culinary wasteland.
Reading this with glee, and wishing that my neighbourhood had a listserv.
With my grandmother it was always copper cleaner. And my aunt wanted prune juice. (Because people in Canada don't get constipated?)