Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

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.