Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

My mom likes snacks and popcorn so for Mother's Day I got her a selection of Pop Art popcorn available from the natural foods aisle at Real Canadian Superstore. Just under $5 per pack and sadly lacklustre especially for the price. The Sweet & Salty Sparkles had light sweetness, barely any saltiness, and you have to look quite closely for the predominantly blue sparkles. I'd recommend just buying some caramel popcorn instead. The Cheddar Jalapeno with Avocado Oil  had a mild creeping heat from the jalapeno but otherwise tasted like bland unflavored popcorn. I suppose if you paid close attention you might get a bit of cheddar flavor. 2025-May-15 UPDATE: I also got to try  Rosemary Truffle with Olive Oil . If you smell a bowl of it there's mild olive oil aroma but the taste was predominantly rosemary although this seemed to be inconsistent if you eat a little at a time instead of large handfuls. In both aroma and taste, truffle flavor did not come through.

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 ...

Here's a trick to get instantly ready noodles that you can toast to desired crispiness. No boiling! No frying! (Slide 1) We start with soft tortilla shells. Use any brand you like. I often buy Casa Mendosa plain tortillas from the Real Canadian Superstore when they go on sale since they are really quite versatile. I do find that they are on the "barely cooked" side of paleness so I do like to toast them slightly no matter how I use them. If you have big shells, you can have longer noodles! Cut the tortilla shell into noodles. Ideally you have something like a hand-crank noodle maker  or spaghetti roller , but if you don't you can still get fairly even-width noodles. (Slide 2) Start by rolling up the shell. Then cut the cross section into the desired noodle widths. Make sure your knife is sharp since the act of cutting will compress them and they can become fragile enough where they fold. (Slide 3) Once cut, gently unfurl them, and you have ready-to-eat noodles. I l...

Have you had a hamburger where they used a "brioche" bun? It was really tender and pillowy, and unlike firmer buns it didn't squeeze the burger out of the bun when you bit into it? If you like that kind of bun, you can fake it with plain bagels from the supermarket and one easy trick involving a skillet. I have had the best results from No Name Brand plain bagels from the Real Canadian Superstore but you can try it with any supermarket bagel to soften them up. Even if you aren't going for a brioche effect, it's a nice way to soften up old bagels without outright toasting them. When you put a bagel in the toaster, it toasts both sides and can come out like crispy, dry, toast. That's not what we're after of course, but you may also have noticed that the inside becomes softer, at least while it's warm. Same with slices of bread, except normally it's less noticeable because the slices are so thin. So what we're going to do is just toast one side o...

A few weeks ago, Real Canadian Superstore started stocking Pran Plain Paratha in the frozen food section. The price has gone up since its first apperance, but it still seems like good value for a whopping 2400 grams and 30 pieces (originally $8.99 I believe, but now $11.49). If there's one thing I really dislike about the product though, it's the excessive plastic. Each piece of paratha is separated from the others by two sheets of plastic. That seems rather excessive, especially nowadays when plastic is basically considered pollution. I think something that might be done to at least reduce the amount of plastic is to simply alternate a paratha and a piece of plastic, instead of two pieces of plastic per paratha. I do try to save them all up and reuse, such as when I make burger patties or bread dough to keep them separated in the freezer. But the sheer amount does pile up. They are very easily prepared in a non-stick frying pan or griddle, and without needing any oil. There...

  Here's an easy method for making simple, convenient, low-to-no mess handheld tortilla "pouches" with very few resources. I like it because I'm lazy. Here are the advantages: No oil needed in the pan to brown the tortilla. If you don't let the fillings touch the pan either and carefully keep them all on the tortilla, your frying pan doesn't need to be cleaned at all. If you are careful folding and eating it, you won't make a mess (so don't over-fill this pouch). What's needed: You just need one or two tortilla shells, such as the cheap 10-packs from Superstore that sometimes go on sale for $5 for two packs. And you need some fillings. I used cheap marble cheese and some cherry sauce but you can put pretty much whatever you like. Be careful not to get all excited and overfill, or it will definitely spill and ooze out, and probably scald you because it'll retain heat very well. Notice I left the center empty as a reservoir space (slide 2). This...

For budget eats, I have found that the baked-in-store bagels from Superstore are the biggest compared to other supermarkets. The prepackaged 6-packs are basically always $3.50 IF you buy TWO at a time. The other types of bagels at Superstore -- also priced the same -- seem a bit smaller or less dense. So if you are squeezing the maximum bang for your buck in terms of a quick, filling, meal I recommend the Always Everything Bagels. Superstore versus Walmart This works out to 60 cents per bagel, and you can certainly get even cheaper bagels at Walmart, coming in at 50 cents per bagel. However, I found Superstore bagels to be fresher and look bigger -- and the biggest-of-the-big seem to be their "Always Everything" bagels topped with poppy seeds, sesame seeds, and roasted onion. That said, we actually weighed a 6-pack of bagels from SuperStore versus a 4-pack of bagels from Walmart and the average weight per "Always Everything" bagel was basically the same. It's no...

My mom had a sudden craving for BBQ chicken and fairly dashed out to Walmart for their 2-for-$15 800g chicken promotion, only to find out that the Metrotown Walmart didn't carry them at all! So she went to Superstore for their 1 kg chickens and bought just one. It turns out the chicken is actually really rather decent. The main things I checked were the breast meat and whether the chicken was cooked through. They probably brined the chicken because the breast meat was really quite moist and tender. Often poultry that hasn't been brined before being roasted ends up with breast meat so dry you need a soft drink or gravy to help you choke it down. Whenever you buy one of these chickens from anywhere, I recommend you don't count on eating the whole thing at a picnic or other no-access-to-cooking space just in case some parts of the chicken turn out not-so-cooked. With this particular chicken however, only the deepest part of the thigh showed any sign of being very, very...

I dropped by the Metrotown Superstore today to TRY to buy Mach 3  razor cartridges. Turns out the cases were PADLOCKED (why?). I looked around and found an attendant in the area, who said she didn't work that that particular department, and pointed me to another attendant even further away. That second attendant also apparently didn't work in the department but at least came over to verify the issue and then said she'd call for someone to unlock the case. I told her I'd stay in the aisle with the cartridges. Shortly after, she dropped by and assured me someone was on the way. That's when I secretly started the timer on my cellphone. I gave them 5 minutes, and when no one came, I left the store. Not gonna wait any more, PLUS stand in the usual interminable lineups to pay for it. Strangely, SOME of the cases were not padlocked while others were. Hmm.