Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

In this post we'll talk about the best way to reheat pizza. Since a pizza is baked you might think you can just pop it back in the oven. You can, but that just further dries it out and generally makes it taste worse. You could steam it but the crust generally becomes soggy and icky. Instead, use your frying pan and do both: In a large, clean, frying pan, put in your slice of pizza. You'll need some room on the side to have just a little bit of water, maybe a tablespoon or so. Ideally the water shouldn't touch the pizza and be soaked into the crust, but it won't totally ruin things if it does. Cover with a reasonably tight lid because we want to keep the steam under the lid. Doesn't have to be pressure-cooker tight. During reheating, do not open the lid or the steam will escape and you'll lose a lot of heat suddenly. On the stove, turn on high heat and listen for the water to start sizzling. That means it's starting to turn to steam. Turn off the heat and let...

It's been a while since I had any coupons from  SocialNature , but I recently qualified for a promotion of A Vogel brand "Herbamare" herb-flavoured sea salt. According to the ingredients, it is "sea salt with vegetables and herbs". I tasted a pinch and it was salty as salt should be, plus clear herb aroma, though not particularly strong. I compared it with regular table salt (slide 6) and it looks like the salt particles are generally more fine than regular table salt (not sea salt). I tried it on some Pran Plain Paratha I got from Superstore. I sprinkled Herbamare on one half while the paratha was still frozen, then toasted it in my toaster oven for 10 minutes at 400 degrees Farenheit (slides 7-8). I tried the pre-seasoned side as well as the plain side which I seasoned with Herbamare after. I did not put an excessive amount of Herbamare, enough to have mild saltiness. Of course the saltiness was evident, but the vegetables and herbs flavor was basically los...

It sounds like common sense that half a truth is not the whole truth, but in truth most people are probably not aware when they only have half a truth. A little crumb of compelling truth is enough to decide things for them. You may have seen assorted news about the conflict in Gaza, especially about student protests such as this one at UBC . I can't remember when it was that I first learned about the conflict between Israel and Palestine, but I do remember it was about the Hamas "terrorists" acting for Palestine. Just the label "terrorist" decided for me that Hamas were the bad guys and therefore, Israel must be the innocent victims. After all, that's what terrorist groups do: They attack innocents to force governments to recognize their demands. War has erupted again, and this time students in North America were siding with Palestine. Older and more guarded about the various subtle attempts by media and politics to influence the masses, I decided to do more...

Despite more technology and more forms of communication possible, how is it that communicating with your bank can be so hard? It really still comes down to people. They can use the technology, but if there's no proper follow-up, it's all useless. Which ultimately leads to simply looking for another financial institution. (1) Earlier this year, I received  an email from a CIBC "Financial Service Representative", Tej Gill. This was the second time that this person has emailed me. When I emailed them back the first time, they did not reply and simply sent me another email weeks later, in March. (2) The email I received in March (slide 1 below) was just as vague and thoroughly uninformative as the first one: I tried reaching out [top] you regarding one of your investment accounts. Please give a call at below number [sic]. Is this some attempt to sell me more stuff? What is this about? I didn't want to waste my time calling, hoping that this person might be in and avai...

My mom is getting on in years but still refusing to treat herself to new things. So this Mother's Day I splurged a bit and got her a Qings Cake  ("King's Cake"?) They can make pictures in a jelly based on photographs you provide, but even without any photos, they have a good assortment of images you can choose from. I didn't have a picture of the cat my mom used to have, but they did have a fluffy cat image, and with a colour substitution for the fur, it turned out really quite well. From a distance it can look quite realistic but of course once you zoom in close, it's clearly not a real cat. Still, the detail and artwork was impressive. (I think many people might be much more impressed, but I'm a jaded sort and very little really impresses me). You can contact them through Instagram to get their current brochure of products -- a small 6-inch jelly cake is not the only product! I'll go through the specifications and my experience with you but I won...

Here's an example of why AI feels quite dangerous at this time, possibly too dangerous to responsibly release for general research use. Below is a very simple example: In this conversation with Facebook's Meta AI, I was trying to ask it how to chat with Meta AI using Facebook Messenger. Here is the transcript of the ending. I have put in bold text the most relevant parts. ME: This did not work. "Meta AI" could not be found in the "To" field. META AI: I apologize for the confusion. I'm a large language model, I don't have a physical presence in Facebook Messenger, so you can't find me in the "To" field. Instead, you can try the following: Open Facebook Messenger Search for "Meta AI" in the Discover People tab: Tap the "Discover People" icon (looks like a compass) and search for "Meta AI" Select the "Meta AI" chatbot: You should see a chatbot with my name and logo. Select it to start a conversat...

Curious about Microsoft CoPilot's ability to research and aggregate data, I asked it to "Describe the typical male love interest in a romance novel of the 80's, the 90's, and later." Specifically I had wanted the 1980's and 1990's separated because it was around that time that libraries seemed to have whole shelves dedicated to Danielle Steel and Nora Roberts, prolific authors in the genre during that period. (Q & A transcripts below). In the 80s, the typical male love interest in romance novels was often portrayed as sexy and "smouldering" They were strong, aggressive, and sometimes even rough with women. Some characters were portrayed as violating women or acting like "assholes". These characters were often undifferentiated from other strong and aggressive men but transformed into a softer man capable of caring for the heroine. Fabio Lanzoni  was the iconic male model for romance novel covers throughout the 80's and 90's....

On sale this week at my local Real Canadian Superstore is Siwin brand  made-in-Canada  Sweet Tocino , a Filipino style heavily marinated pork product. It's quite hard to tell from the package because of all the red marinade, but the pork is quite fatty. Depending on how you feel about your meat, this can be good or bad. Because I was going to char it, and I don't mind tasty fat, I was definitely okay with it. The preparation is extremely simple as the product is already quite a thin slab. I chose to use a non-stick frying pan with a bit of oil: Drizzle a little bit of oil in the non-stick frying pan. Unpack the Tocino into the frying pan, leaving it as a single thin layer. Turn the heat to high and cover the pan. Let it sear for literally just a couple of minutes and check for desired amount of char. Turn the tocino over to char the other side. And just like that, you are done. Because you covered the frying pan, the steam will swirl about in there and leave you a light sauce ...

This week at our local Walmart, Puck was on sale, although it took around half a week before any stock was actually available and put on the International Dairy shelf. The one flavour they had is made primarily from milk, and despite salt being listed third on the ingredient list, it is quite a salty product. In fact, it predominantly tastes like salt, with a faint note of some kind of dairy. It's hard to tell through all the saltiness but I'd say that underlying flavour is close to plain cream cheese. The texture is smooth and extremely soft, much softer than spreadable cream cheese, Nutella, or Cheez Whiz. It's firmness is closer to cake frosting. From their website FAQ: 1. What is Puck Creamy Spread made of? What are the ingredients of Puck Creamy Spread? Puck Creamy Spread is made with natural and pure milk with chocolate, strawberry, and vanilla. It is free from palm oil, artificial flavors, nuts and contains 30% less sugar compared to other similar sweet spreads. 2....

Bikaji brand Indian style snacks are on sale at my local Walmart this week, so I took the opportunity to try a couple. Bikaneri bhujia is made from moth bean, so no surprise there's an underlying bean flavour that's tastes familiar even if you don't know what moth bean is. There's a spicy heat that slowly creeps up, so while it might initially taste mild... wait for it. I rate it at maybe medium spicy. You can see in the picture (slide 2) that my packet contained a long chunk of some kind of crispy dough. My guess is it evaded the machinery meant to press the dough into noodles, and fell into the fryer. Bombay Mix  despite the ingredient mix tasted predominantly like a mild chickpea curry, and only rather mildly spicy. Definitely less spicy than the bikaneri bhujia.

It's been a while since I had any coupons from SocialNature , but I recently qualified for a promotion of Only Goodness. I'd never heard of this brand before, but it is available from our local Save-On-Foods . A quick look at their many products including commonplace staples like rice and pasta, shows they are competitively priced with similar products of other brands. In the case of this couscous , I looked at the price of Casbah brand couscous sold at Real Canadian Superstore , which is generally a cheaper supermarket than Save-on-Foods. The couscous in particular I had trouble locating, though that is probably because I don't often shop for couscous or at Save-on-Foods. All the couscous was in its own "Natural" food section whereas I had initially thought it would be somewhere near grains/rice. Happily the Save-on-Foods staff were extremely helpful and polite and competent. She knew exactly where it was and walked me to the exact product. In many other superma...

I went to Amay's House years ago and remembered it to be rather good, including a really decent roti prata with chicken curry that was just as I remembered eating them long ago in Singapore when I was still a child. They since closed and recently reopened near Joyce Skytrain Station -- basically at the busy intersection of Kingsway and Joyce, next door to the CIBC. Currently it looks terrible with the busted front door, but inside it's clean and decently maintained. Appetizers have appetizer portions and appetizer prices, but noodle mains had generous portions for price, which is not that easy to find nowadays. Great value! Burmese Style Samosas ($10 - samosas stuffed with diced potatoes, onions, traditional spices) Inside it looks like curried potatoes but the flavour is quite weak, though the subtle red onion does make itself known to impart some interestingness to the potatoes. The description doesn't say it's curried potato so they can't be faulted for not hav...

My friend was driving us to Stanley Park earlier today. Traffic was horrible in downtown Vancouver. We were stuck waiting for a light change in what looked like a traffic jam. Her car is basically new. Bought new April 2023. Two red warning lights showed up suddenly -- oil and battery. For unclear reasons, her car became unresponsive. There was a slight downward slope so she let it drift and steered it into a side street. But then noticed her brakes stopped working. This was highly concerning because we were coming up to an intersection and there seemed to be a distracted pedestrian who might have been ready to cross right in front of us. Fortunately, she did not. My friend managed to drift her car onto a flat street and it came to a halt. Her steering wheel stopped responding. Brakes still not responding, but the car had rolled to a halt. We were dead in the water so to speak. She turned the car off. Waited a minute or so then started it up again. Warning lights were gone. Car was fin...

I don't normally buy dipping sauces for my chips, but this was on sale recently, so I picked it up, only to realize I didn't have tortilla chips at home. Instead we experimented a bit and found it great as a spread. It has bold flavour in even just a little bit of sauce. The next step was to try it with pasta and similar noodles, and it turned out wonderfully. The dip is already quite tasty, and we found that just a tablespoon was very generous for a bowl of pasta. But what really made this a winning pasta sauce was the sticky consistency. It might seem somewhat on the watery side, but the stickiness means that it easily coats the pasta and doesn't just drip off and end up at the bottom of your dish. Mixed well, every bite of pasta will have this delicious sauce. For a very simple meal, we boiled some pasta, mixed this sauce in, and accompanied it with some sausage chunks. We also like a bit more spicy heat, so we first put a tablespoon of this sauce on our plate and sti...

This week, Takis tortilla chips are on sale at Walmart , at almost half off the regular price! It's my first time trying this brand, and I'm pleasantly surprised. Very generous flavour coating! You can expect strong, vibrant flavour. The rolled tortilla chips survived largely intact, compared to what happens with most clips. The "hot" rating is I think more like "medium" heat. Kaboom is one of the flavours, and supposedly "ketchup-sriracha". However I found it very unlike typical sour ketchup flavoured chips. In fact it is barely sour at all, the sriracha flavour is clear with sweet undertones, and the tortilla flavour also shows up once you start chewing it. Overall, definitely worth trying, especially right now from Walmart at a discount.

If you're sitting on the fence whether to buy Royal Mixed Mochi -- recently on sale at my local Walmart for 12.88 CAD, just in time for Chinese New Year -- these pictures might help you decide. First of all, the obvious -- the amount of filling displayed on the box is very different from how much was in the actual product. Other than that, the various flavours were fairly tasty. The flavours were on the subtle side, not a taste explosion. Probably better paired with a subtle drink, like a green tea.

My mom is quite elderly now and says she can't handle many types of foods. She likes soft things like rice porridge (congee) every day, so I got her a little something to jazz things up. As she adds some chili to everything for spicy heat and occasionally likes dried seaweed, this spicy Bestore Kelp product seemed to be a promising combo.   First of all, as you can see from our slides, the product doesn't look like the picture on the packaging. It's also quite over-packaged with sub-packages inside, but I suppose that helps with keeping the product from being overexposed to dehydration or needing to be refrigerated if you don't finish it all. The taste is rather mild and the spiciness barely there. The texture is slightly crunchy like al dente pasta but more firm. And this despite being rather thin -- certainly not as thick-looking as the magnified picture on the package. For me strangely the word that initially came to mind was "meaty". Overall it's ok...

My mom loves crunchy chips of all types but is generally too conservative to try anything new, so I got her some fancy Lay's "Truffle Mushroom" Chips . Turns out she really loves them -- says they taste too good to swallow, she just wants to keep savouring the flavour! It's got that perfumey truffle flavour to be sure, and it's also strong and clear. But flip over the package to look at the ingredients and it reads ARTIFICIAL truffle. Be more mindful as you eat it and you may detect a slight sweetness, a buttery note, and a slightly bitter aftertaste. If you're still fine with faked truffle flavour, you may nevertheless want to wait for them to go on sale as it's a rather small amount of chips for your dollar. That said, the flavour is so strong that more than two or three chips at a time and you may start to be turned off, akin to having that greasy feeling from having too much rich cream in one sitting.

My mom loves cruncy chips of all types but is generally too conservative to try anything new, so I got her some Hi Tempura Seaweed (spicy flavour) chips to try, especially as she likes spicy hot stuff as well as dried seaweed. I got it at T&T where they have it listed as Tao Kae Noi Tempura Seaweed , and it comes in spicy and not-spicy versions. The spicy heat is low and it creeps up very slowly, so your initial bites may not register it at first. The overall flavour is curiously like crispy fried fish skin, despite this being a vegetarian product. This brings to mind a sushi class using potato and seaweed to fake unagi (eel) . As you can see from the back of the package, they also recommend it to go with noodles, just as dried sheets of seaweed are sometimes an accompaniment to bowls of ramen. It's versatility is great especially as it's quite pricey for the miserable 40 grams in each package.