Discovering the joys of walking

I’ve always had a bit of wanderlust.  I enjoy hopping in the car with no destination in mind, anticipating the discovery of new terriority. I preferred the simple pleasure of driving, knowing that everything worth seeing is along the way.  I would only leave the comfort of my car to briefly acknowledge some point of interest but had no desire to explore any further than the roadside stop.

Walking, as a leisure activity, has never appealed to me.  Walking is boring, it takes a long time to get anywhere, and…well my knees ache.  I’ve always had troublesome knees and walking only aggravates them further.   In fact, some days I shuffle like a granny. A couple of things happened to change my view.

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Library, an untapped resource?

We cancelled our cable more than six years ago when we took part in the “turn off TV week” campaign, where families were challenged to do without their television for an entire week. (I don’t think they run this campaign anymore now that media access has changed.) It was scary and it was hard; we even had to rig the cord to make it difficult for the kids to plug it back in.   After the week we realized that not having the constant drone was actually kind of nice, all of a sudden there was time to do things, we spent more time together and were more creative in what we were doing.

So we thought why not just continue? We cancelled our cable and that’s when we started accessing the library, particularly for dvd’s. Our local branch had a huge in house selection, not to mention the FVRL online catalogue has thousands of new releases, classics, documentaries and lesser known goodies.  We’ve found many eclectic, quirky and downright fascinating series; movies we would have never rented at the movie stores — and it is all FREE!  Our borrowing has branched out to include music cds, books (of course) while accessing some cools programs put on by the library.

Inevitably when talking with coworkers about what’s on TV, I tell them about our viewing habits and it’s surprising that most don’t even know the library carries dvd’s.  We’re fortunate to have a great library system and one which is important to us, as one of our top relocation criteria is:  “must include access to a library”.

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Cheese

Cheese. The last (and hardest) animal product to give up. Just mention this to anyone and they’ll tell you how they cannot live without it. My favourite was to alternate bites of crisp apple with nice sharp cheddar; and of course what’s a glass of wine without a slab of Brie? In keeping with our commitment to not eat animal products, we found that cheese remains the hardest food to substitute. Daiya brand works well in some situations, like melted on or in something, but on crackers with glass of wine, it just doesn’t cut it. However while still on the hunt for the elusive cheese substitute we found this vegan tofu lasagna recipe really brings in the melty-cheesy-goodness of Daiya and nutritional yeast.

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