Bake, bake, bake. Write. Bake. Chat with my mother. Bake. Write.

Piles of baked goods. Yummy-smelling house. Happy, happy Autumn.

Time comes for dinner. I take out the tourtiere we picked up at Loblaws this morning, the box claiming that it’s Made from a traditional Quebecois recipe. My mother used to create an amazing home-made tourtiere that was our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. I proceed to get nostalgic. Open box, pop tourtiere in the oven.

Idly turn over box. Read ingredients.

Pork, beef, veal; water, onions, textured soy protein, potatoes –

Whoa. Jus’ whoa.

Textured soy protein?

I’m fairly certain that traditional Quebecois recipes for tourtiere do not include textured soy protein.

Don’t get me wrong – I like TSP when I’ve had it, especially in vegetable stir-fries.

It’s just… odd.

At least there’s no swarms of poly-syllabic chemical-preservative-like things lurking in this tourtiere. The ingredient list goes on to read: toasted wheat crumbs, salt, spice, dextrose, onion powder, garlic powder. Pastry: enriched wheat flour, lard, water, salt, calcium propionate. Glaze: water, enriched wheat flour, dextrose, milk ingredients, canola oil.

I know what all of that is. That’s rare, when I read ingredient lists. It usually depresses me. (Okay, the calcium propionate is a preservative, but it’s used in most bread products, and that’s just the pastry in this tourtiere. I’m amazed. I’m truly amazed.)

I have such an exciting life.

We went grocery shopping this morning at the new Loblaws in the neighbourhood. We took a tour through it before, a couple of weeks ago when it opened, but it was extremely crowded and we didn’t get a sense of much other than it was huge and had lots of food on the shelves. This morning (who goes grocery shopping at nine AM on a Friday? – except us, apparently) it was nice and empty, and we got a much better look at it. Apparently I have no life, because it was much too enjoyable. Exploring a new grocery store shouldn�t be this thrilling.

Finding a bag of half a dozen chicken legs for under two dollars shouldn�t be that exciting either. Sigh.

Neither should putting up a shelf in the kitchen so that I can move my teapot and basket of tea off the counter.

The second half of the two-part workshop I gave went rather well last night, to my relief. The last week of teaching has been horrible all around; let�s hope this signals a change for the better. I know everyone�s been tense, and as the holiday season approaches tension will only increase, but perhaps with a little more awareness of everyone�s limits, we can all get along, and survive until the end of December.

My back is better, thanks to an emergency trip to an athletic therapist while my osteopath is on vacation� just in time for the pain in my right wrist to flare up. Honestly, it feels like a conspiracy. This wrist pain was triggered by nothing I can think of, since it began to ache at Ceri�s birthday celebration on Wednesday night, and has proceeded to get more and more painful until I�m at the point where I can�t carry things in my hand, or open doors with it. My husband keeps telling me to stretch it, which hurts, so I resist doing it. When I do stretch, though, at least I gain mobility, and lessen the overall ache. I can type, oddly enough, if I make sure I don�t throw my hand too severely to the right to hit number keys or make too abrupt a mouse movement. Being able to type is a good thing since I have a half-complete newsletter to finish today. I wanted to get a new article done, too.

Stuart McLean tonight! Hurrah!