Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

If you're the type to balk at $3.00 cupcakes and look at how you could get four for the same price at Safeway, you should stop reading now. Talking about $4 cupcakes will be meaningless to you. If you are willing to pay for that extra notch of quality, however, then you should definitely consider Edible Flours. As far as specialty cupcakes go, $3 to $4 for a single cupcake from Edible Flours (2280 West Broadway, between Vine & Yew) is par for the course, if you compare Edible Flours with, say, that pink cupcake franchise, Cupcakes . What Edible Flours have over Cupcakes is that you get the option of Soy Free, Wheat Free, Gluten Free, and/or Sugar Free, all on top of natural ingredients and vegan baking . If you're vegan, beggars can't be choosers. As cupcakes go, there are plusses and minuses here, but mostly plusses. The cakes are moist and overall very well made. The icing is very generous, more so than what you get from machine-made stuff in the supermarket (th...

This past sunny Saturday I dropped by Indigo Food (2589 West 16th Avenue) , a raw food cafe run by Lovena B. Galyide, a pleasant Ukraine lady who had only just opened it after two years of teaching raw food preparation out of her home. Her home-based business had grown to a size unmanageable to be home-based, so it was time to expand into an actual store. I'm omnivorous, so checking out raw vegan fare is more of a novelty for me. And since I'm comparing my experience against my own unrestricted diet, if you're vegetarian, vegan, or raw vegan, you'll have to take this into consideration. I had a so-so experience at Gorilla Food and a better one at Organic Lives restricting myself to their desserts , so when I found out about the High Tea at Indigo Food, I jumped on that. I had basically what's in the picture on their website, though I can't say I remember the strawberries. The chocolate on the top tray is in fact made in-house. The list of items is s...

Here's the latest mainstream challenge against "the establishment" -- and from the trailer it looks less hysterical than various Michael Moore offerings. Probably closer to the sober The Corporation , if you can get past the mention of UFOs. Yup, there's brief mention of UFOs. If you can't buy that, just blank it out from your mind and keep watching the trailer. The rest isn't so "far out". Thrive will air November 11th, 2011 (yup, that's 11.11.11).

You may have seen this floating about your Facebook wall, Shared by your friends: This is a true story of Mother’s Sacrifice during the Japan Earthquake. After the Earthquake had subsided, when the rescuers reached the ruins of a young woman’s house, they saw her dead body through the cracks. But her pose was somehow strange that she knelt on her knees like a person was worshiping; her body was leaning forward, and her two hands were supporting by an object. The collapsed house had crashed her back and her head. With so many difficulties, the leader of the rescuer team put his hand through a narrow gap on the wall to reach the woman’s body. He was hoping that this woman could be still alive. However, the cold and stiff body told him that she had passed away for sure. He and the rest of the team left this house and were going to search the next collapsed building. For some reasons, the team leader was driven by a compelling force to go back to the ruin house of the dead woman. Aga...

This weekend is the Vancouver Egyptian Film Festival , featuring five short movies and a gala event Saturday night with Egyptian food (before the feature movie for the festival, Cry of an Ant ). You can watch little trailers on the official website and sign on with Meetup to see who else is going .

I dropped by Terracotta Modern Chinese Restaurant last Friday as part of the WonTon -sponsored 604 Social 's mingler. Only about half of the ~70 people who RSVP'ed attended, which was a good thing because we'd otherwise have been over-full. Terracotta is a pretty small space, but with an upstairs and a downstairs. The mirror on one side makes it look bigger than it really is -- I suppose that's why they have those mirrors there. The online menu doesn't make any distinctions between small plates and actual meals, and you can't really tell by the price -- so you might want to ask first in case you get overwhelmed by what you order. For example, some people ordered the tasty Terracotta Short Rib Sliders that come in slightly sweet and chewy buns ( Three Braised Beef Short Rib and Green Onion Sliders served in Golden Mantou Buns 10.00 ). This was really appy-sized, and you may feel it's a bit pricey for $10. They also ordered fried rice (I wasn...

There is a restaurant in Boulder, Colorado called "Bombay Bistro", which has had the distinction of being the #1 restaurant there at a time when there were close to 100 more restaurants in the area . Internet reviews being the shifting tides as they are, at the time of writing this review, they were third, behind Tangier Moroccan Cuisine and Brasserie Ten Ten. Bombay Bistro is a family affair, run by Paul and Pari, a husband-and-wife team who had the good fortune of building the restaurant just the way they liked it, from an empty plot of land. They were from India, and from a family of maybe 50 that has between them 10 Indian restaurants. This husband-wife team, however, does things differently from the rest of the family, and their newest restaurant in Yaletown, Sutra Modern Indian (862 Richards) -- just 3 weeks old when I had dinner there -- is different from probably any other Indian restaurant you've been to. Unlike most Indian restaurants, there isn't t...

In case you've been living under a rock, there's a massive search going on for a recently possibly-abducted child, Kienan Hebert. Just about everyone's splashed this " Amber Alert " to get the word out. You'll definitely see it on the televisions at the Skytrain stations. That's great. But could we have pictures with that? One day of front-page newspaper coverage with pics isn't the same as mugshots to remind you of what they look like and for you to compare. They could be squashed against you on a busy skytrain and you wouldn't know it -- especially in Vancouver where people do seem to mind their own business, not make eye contact, or just stare into whatever Facebook/text messaging doo-dad they have.

Late last week, Groupon offered a half-off coupon (maximum 3) for C Restaurant , specifically for a 9-course tasting menu. I still hadn't gotten myself around to going to C, so this looked like a great opportunity. Found two friends to go and we were all set. The restaurant was buzzing but not so busy that there was a lineup. Our reservation was for 7pm, and we were pleased to be able to patiently nibble our way through the nine courses without being rushed out the door. In fact, given the slow slow-down during the night, we ended up spending 3-1/2 hours chatting and savouring the exquisite food. C is one of those restaurants where you have attentive male waiters -- Like Joe Fortes or Lumiere. No tight-shirted buxom servers here. The other diners that night were a mix of age ranges, though, sad to say, many of the under-40's looked like they spent half their time hunched over their iPhones. The tasting menu was... Wild- and cultivated-mushroom velouté with garlic con...

If you're not already on the Kashi e-mail mailing list, you really want to get on it. I got yet another freebie from them today... Click here for the offer .