So, I've been lurking here while eating leftover stuffing from Thanksgiving (Canadian), and I've been wondering why anyone would include bland celery in all that bready goodness. In fact, I'm still trying to figure out why anyone even buys celery -- it's not like it has any real nutritional or flavour value.
I've also been wondering if SteveS is a machine. I just read his responses on one of religion threads and he's not only logical to the point that I had to struggle to remember what I learned in my logic class to keep up, but he's good-natured about it. Wow. I need a dose of that. I can be a little knee-jerk and emotional sometimes, and living in the bible belt of Canada doesn't help that reactionary tendency.
Anyhoo, I'm an atheist and I like hanging around other atheists, so, voila.
Welcome aboard.
Welcome! Well put about SteveS, he surely is all that. You'll find many other really cool people here, too
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Hope you enjoy the forum. I didn't even realize Canada had a bible belt, ha. You're gonna need us!
We'll be here..
Hey, i put celery in my stuffing too, i like it. Maybe for color. Break it up a little, maybe. Celery rules. I heard once that it takes more calories to digest celery than it has in it. hmmm.
I am only three hours from Canada, like it a lot, been all over there a number of times. Does your thanksgiving have anything to do with your early settlers and pilgrims and stuff? (ours does....my native american friends call it Immigration Day, though)
WELCOME!!!!!
Thanks for the welcomes!
Our thanksgiving is all about the harvest -- no cherished legends to support the tradition I'm afraid. We do have a lot of the American traditions (cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie) which came from the loyalists who moved up here during the American revolution.
I suppose celery does add colour, and I've heard that too about using more calories to digest it than you gain from it. So, it's a good diet food then (unless ingested with peanut butter. Mmmmm, peanut butter).
I'm afraid we do have a bible belt here in Southern Alberta. To my eternal shame, a creation museum was built in this area, not far from the Royal Tyrrel Museum of Paleontology. I've been thinking about peacefully protesting with placards of Darwin fish and map showing the way to the Tyrrell.
EDIT: P.S. People do seem nice here. Huzzah!
LOVE the map idea!!! what a hoot!!! bah ha ha!
Welcome, Sabine! I feel the same way about celery... my cook husband eats it all the time because it fills him up without adding calories or bad stuff, but honestly, yuck. Unless it has cheese or peanut butter on it, what's the point? :lol:
Welcome to the forum, Sabine. I hope you enjoy your stay.
Welcome, and eat your veggies!
Thank you for the welcomes! So far I am enjoying myself here.
I am so with you rose.
I do eat my veggies, but I stay away from the "crunchy water" food group (that also includes iceberg lettuce)
Lettuce is awful. For the life of me I cannot understand people eating it. Celery is pretty bad, too.
Also, you should get together with the people that can't stand cilantro and start a scorched earth campaign across the lands that these crops are cultivated on.
Erm... I kind of like cilantro. But I like your clever username more

That actually made me laugh out loud when I finally figured it out.
http://www.ihatecilantro.com/ (http://www.ihatecilantro.com/) it's funny.
And yes. I'm totally clever.
The link comes up as the site wasn't found.
Am I the only one who finds it a little odd that our profiles have both our western and chinese horoscopes on them?
I accidently got the comma into the link. It's fixed now.
Ha! You have to love any site that has thematic haikus.
Hooray for celery! I get those packs from the store that have the sticks in water so they are cold, crunchy, and ready to be eaten at any time. :)
Oh, and Hi!
Explain hummus to me.... :?
oooo... I love hummus. But just PLAIN hummus... with roasted red pepper on top.
I've always hated chick peas/garbanzos so I never even TRIED hummus. I only developed a liking of hummus this summer when we went to Napa and visited the CIA (Cooking Institute of America) and we had an appetizer tray that had a hummus on pita appetizer (with a little lamb meatball on top). It was DELICIOUS!
Since then, my evening snack is usually hummus and Triskits. Yum!
Hey, welcome to the forum...somehow I missed your thread till today.
Celery is high in fiber and low in almost everything else...I guess the fiber is what is good about it. I don't particularly care for it and prefer the kind of stuffing which doesn't inlclude celery.
Quote from: "MommaSquid"Explain hummus to me.... :?
Hummus is gooooooddd! But, I did try some grocery store (Vons) hummus before and it... um, it was BAD! BAD BAD! Hummus is a beautiful thing because it feels like you're eating pure carbs... but you're not.

Yum, carbs!
I'M A HUMMUS ADDICT!!11!!ONE! I couldn't live without it. I love it with organic tortilla chips. And I only like original, or roasted red pepper hummus -- the rest are no good.
Fibre, eh? Is that what you call the stringy stuff? I suppose that makes it somewhat acceptable. Somewhat. Minorly. Itty-bitty bit.
My favorite hummus is at Whole Foods market... YUM! But I accidentally got the lemon hummus once on the buffet and wow, it was terrible (at least to MY taste buds... hubby liked it).
Has anyone made their own? I'd love a recipe...
It's surprisingly easy to make:
1 16 oz can of chickpeas or garbanzo beans
1/4 cup liquid from can of chickpeas
3-5 tablespoons lemon juice (depending on taste)
1 1/2 tablespoons tahini
2 cloves garlic, crushed
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 tablespoons olive oil
Put it all in a blender and serve.
Source (http://mideastfood.about.com/od/appetizerssnacks/r/hummusbitahini.htm)
It's been years since I've made it. I always roasted my garlic in the oven with olive oil before adding it, and I used waaaaaaay more than two cloves. I'm a little fond of garlic
Maybe I'll try celery stuffed with hummus.
Sh#t, another illusion gone. I always thought that Americans only liked burgers, fries and coke :lol:.
Quote from: "Tom62"Sh#t, another illusion gone. I always thought that Americans only liked burgers, fries and coke :lol:.
Don't worry Tom62.
I'll take burgers, fries and coke over hummus any day!!
Quote from: "Tom62"Sh#t, another illusion gone. I always thought that Americans only liked burgers, fries and coke :lol:.
No... we prefer the all-American dish, pizza.
I like hummus...just tried it for the first time the other day. I got it pre-packaged at Tom Thumb (a grocery chain) it is part of their eat smart (or something like that) line of foods. It was pretty good...or at least the garlic version was. I bought some with red pepper today but haven't tried it yet.
Central Market (an HEB with locally grown stuff) has hummus in their freshly made section...I should pick some up when I'm over there next.
I also love hummus. We've got a very good Lebanese/Syrian restaurant around the corner that makes in perfectly. They've offer a wonderful mezzeh buffet there. I should try to sneek into their kitchen and steal all their recipes.
I absolutely love hummus. It's one of those things I thought I wouldn't like, but I was at a friend's house one day and she had some, and I tried it, and after that it took all the willpower I had to not eat the entire container.
I also hate celery. It's all stringy and gross.
Quote from: "laetusatheos"I bought some with red pepper today but haven't tried it yet.
^It wasn't that great but still good enough that I ate it.
Hello SabineMaia - sorry for the delayed welcome. I've been gone for a few weeks.
Quote from: "SabineMaia"I've also been wondering if SteveS is a machine.
Haha! Just flesh and blood - and I've just been applying what I've learned from the great atheists - primarily George Smith - his is a beautifully logical mind.
Oh, about celery --- if it doesn't go in beer I'm afraid I'm not that familiar with it. Now hops, on the other hand, I could discuss for days.....
:wink:
Where is the bible belt in Canada? I'm curious - my dad is Canadian (never went for U.S. citizenship, though he's lived here for ~40 years). He's from northern Manitoba, not too far from the Saskatchewan border. As far as I can tell the area was fairly religious - don't know what its like now, though. :?
Oops, I've been gone a bit too.
Technically, the southern Alberta, Saskatchewan and south-eastern parts of BC are considered the Bible belt of Canada. There's a higher concentration of religious people, and churches here than anywhere else in Canada, but religiosity generally increases the further you go into rural areas here. A friend of mine told me about a fanatical wingnut he interviewed in northern Alberta, who raised money to go to Africa with her church to convert and exorcise people, because they practice witchcraft there. I just about fainted when he told me. I've been, luckily, sheltered enough from the extremes that I didn't think this kind of thing still went on. Anyway, here in southern Alberta, we have the creation museum and Cardston, which is where the big Mormon temple is located (and you can't get a beer in the town at all. Shame!),
In Calgary (the largest city in southern Alberta), there are a few religious stations, creation discussions are carried out in letters-to-the-editor, and the lifestyle sections include faith pages -- all-in-all a fairly innocuous religious presence by comparison, but, the other day, I was preached at by a rabid creationist while walking downtown. That as new to me. I have the feeling that innocuous nature is beginning to erode.
Oh -- celery, apparently goes well in a Ceasar, which has either vodka or tequila in it, but no hops.
Fascinating about the Canadian bible belt. I've never been to Calgary or anything remotely near-by. On my trips to visit family I've gone through Winnipeg - which isn't very close to Calgary :wink:
My relations on my father's side followed an ... interesting religion. It was the "new church" founded by Emanuel Swedenborg (http://swedenborg.newearth.org/). They were not all very devout, though - some more than others.
Avoiding the creation museum won't be hard, but thanks for the tip-off about Cardston; I'll certainly avoid that town if I can't even get a beer. That's just plain un-Canadian!
Swedenborg, eh? They'll make a church out of anything these days. Religion really is like a multi-headed hydra.
Calgary is well worth a visit if you ever have the chance. On the one side we have the Rockies and Banff National Park, which is a UNESCO heritage site, and on the other we have the badlands where you can find the Royal Tyrrell Museum of Paleontology. It's all very beautiful in the summer, but also very far away from Winnipeg.
Sounds good. If I went, I think I'd like an autumn visit and then maybe I could catch a Flames game at the Saddledome. I really like Jarome Iginla - and I wanted the Flames to beat Tampa Bay so bad back in '04 I could taste it.
The Museum of Paleontology sounds really cool - I've never heard of it. I'm sure I would enjoy that.
Jarome is a pretty cool guy.
The Royal Tyrrell is one of the best there is. The creation museum was built about an hour away from there, as a response to the unmitigated evolution that the Tyrrell teaches. I've heard rumours that some creationists go into the museum and tell visitors that what's on display is wrong, and that it's apparently gotten worse since the creation museum was built. I've also heard that they pieced together dino bones incorrectly for the creation museum with some fluff about humans and dinos living at the same time. Dammit! Now I'm going to have to plan a visit so I can see it for myself, then go to the Tyrrell to get my head straightened out.
Cripes - this sounds as bad as the infamous creation museum here in the states, plus other farcical institutions like the Oral Roberts university.
It saddens me to see our neighbors to the north are impacted by this same nonsense, but I guess it doesn't surprise me. Our cultures seem so very similar.
If a creationist approached me in a proper, scientific museum and began to tell me the exhibits were wrong - he better bring some thick skin with him. I can imagine myself reacting in a highly sarcastic manner. The equivalent behavior, just to put a proper perspective on it, would be to attend the creation museum and start harassing the attendees - this I would consider highly obnoxious, regardless of whether or not I think their exhibits are fallacious nonsense.
One thing I really don't admire about the religious is their boldness - their desire to get up in somebody's face and push their superstitious pap on them. I have no problem discussing these topics in a civilized fashion on an open forum, or in a private discussion --- but for someone to accost a museum patron, uninvited and out of the blue, and start arguing that their religious stories make more sense than the scientific exhibits on display is just plain rude, out of line, unwarranted, obtuse, ego-centric, over-bearing and thoroughly despicable.
In my next post I'll tell you how I really feel....
:wink:
If you decide to visit the creation museum you should take some pictures and post a re-cap of your findings - I'm sure many here would find it both humorous and alarming!
I'm with you about the boldness. I don't walk into churches, or accost people on the street to tell them how wrong they are. It's uncivilized.
Hmmm, maybe I'll make it the first stop of a "Wacky and Weird Alberta" summer trip -- first visit the creation museum in Big Valley, then go up to the world's largest UFO landing pad (AND interpretive centre) in St. Paul. That one's been on my list for a while now. I think we just need one more stop to make it an official tour package.
Now I just have to find the perfect road trip buddy.
Celery stalks. How creepy is that?
Too creepy. What's with the built-in dental floss of it?