CANADIAN OIL, LOW ACID

My friend Suzanne is brilliant. She is articulate, beautiful, funny, wise beyond measure and brilliant. I had to say it again because even though I've known this for some time, I really want to be sure you are paying attention.


She has for years collected and retained information that the average person would have reason to recall only if they were on Who Wants to be a Millionaire, which is stupid, like, Regis or Meredith, duh, who DOESN'T want to be a millionaire? I think that would be a funnier show, but I digress. Back to Suzanne, information you need to know say if you're getting a doctorate in philosophical-sociological rhetoric of the 21st century and it's technical applications, notwithstanding the use of slang and antiquated knowledge.


I just made all that up... Suzanne has, for years, been absolutely stoic in the delivery of statements that rendered me useless for no less than 10 minutes. I will describe this more later. Her comedic timing is unintentional which makes it even more amazing and her delivery of information is methodically sincere, she has no particular agenda, no intention to correct or overbear. She just has facts and knowledge, stored up in her gray matter like a reassuring supply of beans and bacon during a famine. And if there was any person well versed in combatting intellectual famine - it would be Suzanne.


Some people revel in telling you stuff they think you ought to know. The purveyors of "THEY SAY", self-proclaimed experts on matters of health, money, child rearing, and relationships. They say you shouldn't eat red meat...they say you should invest in mutual funds...they say you should get your oil changed every 3000 miles. Is that so? Well who are THEY and why do THEY think they run the universe? Suzanne on the other hand, never quotes, THEY except very accidentally and because it's a life-long habit of circumstance. Try running a bibliography of every snippet of good advice or interesting factoid in your head to credit the origins of things you happen to know. Sometimes THEY are just those guys who you can't remember who printed an article in a ladies' magazine you read while having a pedicure. And THEY say, canola oil is better for you than vegetable oil and sometimes even olive oil. Seriously, I'm not making this up. (totally plagiarizing Dave Barry here.)


Suzanne and I use the buddy system to shop at WinCo. WinCo is one of those warehousy grocery stores replete with overgrown families trolling the aisles keeping toddlers at bay. It's not like Costco which has lighting that makes even the flimsiest diamond sparkle, it's more a big discount place, cheaper this and cheaper that, no credit cards and you have to do the grocery bagging (the pressure of which causes me great anxiety) yourself and God help you if you forget something because it takes 15 minutes to get back to dairy - if you have your own golf cart that is. Suzanne and I go together because we hate it and we comfort one another while managing the large unwieldy shopping carts and navigating throngs of people. Why it is that no one seems as anxious to get their goods and get out as we do is a mystery. But today, Suzanne's list is small, she needs a few essentials, coffee, cheese, cereal, broccoli and COOKING OIL.


Well, if you haven't bought cooking oil lately, let me tell you, you're gonna need a spreadsheet and a couple of field manuals to make sure you don't screw up and end up with something totally likely to congest all of your heart valves. Watch out for HYDROGENATED anything, once the miracle butter replacement, hardened, artificially-colored petroleum products, while handy and less expensive than butter, are apparently responsible for high cholesterol, bad skin, heart attacks and Donald Trump's hair. So, unless you're baking competitive pie crusts, the SHORTENING (what does that mean anyway? Suzanne probably knows..) is out. Okay, so olive oil then, good for you, natural, plenty of Omega-3s and it costs roughly the same per quart as your first car. And please God, don't get the plain old olive oil it tastes like something moldy also from your first car.  No, you need virgin olive oil (will someone explain what it hasn't done yet that makes it virgin?) slightly nutty, good at high temps for cooking, very good for you. But wait!


THEY SAY NOW THAT CANOLA OIL IS EVEN BETTER!!! So down the oil aisle (say that fast 3 times) and I find myself slowing our mutual cart down because I'm a mother and I'm about to mother Suzanne even though she doesn't need me to and I know better, but THEY SAY THAT CANOLA OIL IS BEST, so before I can filter, I just blurt out, "Here's the Canola oil!" But before I can impress upon Suzanne my cache of understanding about the superiority of canola oil, she levels me with, "You know there is no such thing as a canola."


What? Immediate confusion, fear.


What do you mean? Olive oil is from pressed olives, corn oil from pressed corn and canola oil is from pressed canola. Right? It never even occurred to me that canola wasn't some leafy green thing that probably stinks but makes heart-healthy oil when pressed or boiled or irradiated. Isn't canola a plant? Didn't my grandmother grow those or was it columbine or calendula? I refute her statement, vehemently for about 107 seconds. That's all it takes to absorb how remarkably funny that statement is. She didn't even twitch the corners of her mouth, her lips remained motionless and her marbled blue eyes dead on. Suzanne is NOT a jester or yanker of chains. I just laugh, almost to the point of peeing a little which has become a constant hazard since bearing a child and reaching the age of 40 (okay, passing it, whatever). Suzanne sees that not only do I not believe her, she will have to elaborate if she plans on getting me to push the cart any further.


"What do you mean there is no such thing as a canola?" I beg. "It's some kind of oil developed by the Canadians." she spits out and with incredulous shock, I mock her. She can see that I've had to cross my legs in my stance a bit. I still think she's out of her mind and making this up. Who would know that? And why? And surely they don't call it Can-ola because it's Canadian Oil. Really?


"Oh, it gets better, she says and now she's delighted herself. “It's made from rapeseed oil, they couldn't just call it rape-oil now could they?" Too late, I've laughed into hitching gasps and water is streaming out of my eyes, pants-peeing is really a given here, but I manage to hold on by posturing. I can't breathe. Suzanne is only beginning to laugh but not at how hilarious she is or how clever - no she is starting to laugh because I am just about laid out on the floor, aisle 15 of the local WinCo thinking about rape-oil and the non-existence of the friendly canola plant. So, I bust out the I-Phone, because still, REALLY?


Google, and Wikipedia...wait for it...wait for it.
Canola is one of two cultivars of rapeseed or Brassica campestris (Brassica napus L. and B. campestris L.).[1] Their seeds are used to produce edible oil that is fit for human consumption because it has lower levels of erucic acid than traditional rapeseed oils and to produce livestock feed because it has reduced levels of the toxin glucosinolates.[2] Canola was originally naturally bred from rapeseed in Canada by Keith Downey and Baldur R. Stefansson in the early 1970s,[3][4] but it has a very different nutritional profile in addition to much less erucic acid.[5] The name "canola" was derived from "Canadian oil, low acid" in 1978.[6][7] A product known as LEAR (for low erucic acid rapeseed) derived from cross-breeding of multiple lines of Brassica juncea is also referred to as canola oil and is considered safe for consumption.[8]



From this day forward and forever more, Canola will no longer grace my grocery list, no indeed, it will only be called, Canadian oil, low acid. Hey, I need some Canadian Oil, Low Acid for my stir fry. Or even better, let’s stroll into Albertson’s and ask what aisle is the rape-oil on.






How did Suzanne know that? Why does she know that? How in the hell did she remember that? That's why we love her because there is room for that in her precious mind and she seems able to dish it up (or spoon feed me) when it is most important that I laugh on a Tuesday night at the grocery.