In a personal victory, I finally convinced someone to stop at the Big Apple, and it was just as good as I had always hoped, although not in a conventional sense. The story goes that, during the first 6 years of my life, we would have to drive quite frequently between Kingston and the Toronto area to visit our grandparents. On this road, the massive structure of an apple is a prominent landmark. I can see why a child would be attracted to such a bold, primary-colour, unusual sight. I, and probably my siblings eventually, would always beg my parents to stop at this massive apple. I wanted to see what was there, because I was sure that such a structure was there for a reason. Every time we passed it, I would beg. And sometimes, my mom or dad would give indications that we might stop. But it was a ruse. We never did. I don’t know if they used reason (”It is just a shop, it is just for show”) to explain this, but my young mind was never satisfied, and the enforced suspense felt like torture. Why wasn’t I allowed to stop at the monstrous apple, if it was such a non-thing? Eventually, my expectations for the grandeur of the place were shattered, but my desire to stop there was not: I didn’t care if it was just a place to buy dessert, I would not be content until I saw that! But we were still never allowed to stop there.
Well, yesterday, with Paul at the wheel, we did. I admit, he wasn’t much more willing than my parents were when I was 6, but at least Paul is more vulnerable to my requests. As co-travelers, we have a lot of say over the route we take together. We have a rule of no refusal: if an adventure (such as a stop at the Big Apple) is suggested, you can’t just say no: you either have to suggest an alternative, or go along and be accepting of the adventure.
The Big Apple is an over-priced gift shop, and it has some caged animals that reminded me of the poor souls locked in the perpetuity of a tourist’s camera flash at Magnetic Hill. But we got some good pie at the gift shop to bring to Paul’s mom and step dad, and I got a picture to prove I finally fulfilled this dream.
But the adventure was not over. The Rule of No refusal paid off, because in the parking lot, we discovered a pristine (or as pristine as used grease can be) grease dumpster. We filled three 16 liter tubs from it, and it was the best grease we have collected so far. Used vegetable oil of prime quality has never been used to fry animals of any kind, and this stuff definitely hadn’t. In the past, the nicest stuff we had was from french fry wagons and fish and chip joints, but vegetable oil used to fry apple fritters and dumplings is, apparently, the best vegetable oil of all. Thank you Big Apple! We are in Oshawa now, visiting and getting ready for our May 19th or 20th departure into the States.
I had no idea there were so many grease dumpsters in Canada (and I presume the U.S. has at least as many). I don’t know what I thought happened to all the grease. I guess I just didn’t think.
What DOES HAPPEN to all the GREASE in the dumpsters usually? (When there is no white bus and black dog to filter and use it up again?)
The grease: well, some companies pay the restaurants for it, and some restaurants pay the companies to take it. It often depends on the city, and the grease. For example, Blue Bio, a Halifax company, pays the restaurants 5 cents a liter for their used cooking oil, if they keep it free of water contamination, animal fats, and other kitchen waste. Blue Bio then further cleans this oil, and either recycles it into BioDiesel, or sells it straight for 40 cents a litre to other people like us who run their vehicles or furnaces off of the straight vegetable oil.
Blue Bio doesn’t provide the restaurants with any hardware with which to collect or keep their oil clean. Bigger companies, like Rothsay from Montreal (a subsidiary of Maple Leaf Foods and a major Waste Vegetable Oil player in this part of Canada) sometimes do provide the oil dumpsters to the restaurants, this ensures that they are compatible with the oil collecting pipes and pumps on the Rothsay trucks. Rothsay charges restaurants for the oil removal service they provide, but they also turn the vegetable oil into Biodiesel. Rothsay also has the ability to turn animal fats into biodiesel, so they will take away dirtier oil than Blue Bio would accept. We have cracked open the large Rothsay dumpsters to find pure lard, as well as veggie dirtied with unimaginable filth. Not useful to us, but to a big company that makes biodiesel out of all of Maple Leaf Food’s pig carcasses, not a big problems.
The Big Apple dumpster was a Rothsay. So was the Japanese restaurant’s dumpster that we got 4 buckets of clean stuff from before leaving Oshawa. Places that don’t fry a lot of food might not have an oil dumpster, they might just put the used stuff back into the containers that it comes in, and pay someone like Rothsay to take that away, less frequently then they would do their dumpster rounds.
I’ve always wanted to take a picture of a sign like that with all the cities, but I’ve never seen one in real life.