Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

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....

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.

This Yelp Review of the Surrey City Central Walmart demonstrates just why you should never ever sign up for a Walmart Mastercard when offered to you by the cashier in the checkout aisle. You are already done with your shopping but they'll pressure you to buy even more. There are apparently various promotions for a first-time sign-up that you have to use right away, and you may not have the time to adjust your shopping cart to take advantage of it; or you just don't need anything at the moment that would add up to the required amount. You really want to just get the brochure and read it through first, especially if you really just care about the one-time sign-up promotions. Then you can properly understand the terms and conditions and ensure that you will indeed properly qualify. And since these are one-time promotions, it's not really important exactly when you sign up for the Walmart Mastercard, especially if your current credit card already has comparable or superior ben...

Even though I'm currently living on a rather severe budget, I still wanted something (cheap) to go with my homemade bread buns. After some thought, I settled on Nutella. Not only did it satisfy my requirements, it was also chocolate! Total winner! Of course being on a budget, I didn't just waltz down to Walmart and pick up Nutella, since name brands tends to be on the pricier side. I ended up with the Walmart brand Great Value Chocolate Hazelnut Spread  -- almost 40% cheaper than Nutella  and I wasn't going to be fussy about any difference in taste (honestly just having that much chocolate made me pretty happy). Now a third of the way through the jar, I got to thinking... What might satisfy my chocolate-on-bread craving and be even cheaper? The first thing I discovered was Walmart.ca didn't have nearly enough precise subcategories. You can't even find baking chocolate (slide 2) in its own category, for example. For the slide presented I actually ended up searching...

When I ran out of Knorr Chicken Broth Mix and my local Walmart didn't have any (!) on the shelves, I contented myself with Lee Kum Kee Chicken Bouillon Powder , thinking they'd be approximately the same thing. Even the proportions to use (1 tsp per 1 cup of boiling water) were the same. Well, it turned out I was wrong. I normally use a whopping 2 tablespoons per 1 tablespoon of uncooked rice when I prepare the chicken soup version of my " TV dinner rice bowls " and the Knorr powder resulted in what tasted like instant noodle chicken soup. Whereas the Lee Kum Kee powder tasted like... SALT. Yes, it just tasted salty. Whatever flavour was flattened by the overwhelming amount of saltiness. If you follow the instructions and use 2 tsp of Lee Kum Kee per 2 cups of boiling water and just make chicken stock, it's not super salty, but the flavor is weak. If you double it, the flavor improves a bit but you can tell the saltiness will overtake it if you put in even more ...

Black Diamond Cheddar Cheese Slices are on sale at Walmart this week, at the very low price of $1.97 per 410g pack (normally $3.88). You can get regular thickness at 22 slices per pack, or extra thick at 14 slices per pack. At this price, it is amazingly cheap compared to basically every other type of cheese you can get at Walmart. I bought two packs of the regular Cheddar, and immediately regretted it as soon as I ate a slice. The problem is the flavour is so very weak as to barely be present -- especially for a cheese that claims to be cheddar, normally a stronger-flavoured cheese. It is so weak as to be easily overpowered by pretty much anything else you are having it with, thus making it pointless to add. Even eaten on its own, the cheddar flavour is disappointingly feeble. Too bad I had discarded my receipt already. Otherwise I'd go back for a refund on the unopened pack.

My 8-quart InstantPot with Air Fryer worked so well on crisping up raw potatoes that I wanted to try them on Walmart's Great Value brand perogies . Here are the results at the default 400 degrees Farenheit setting on the Air Fryer. I used the air fryer bin, used straight-from-the-freezer frozen perogies, did not add any oil. 5 minutes (slide 1) Did not appear sufficiently cooked. add 5 minutes (slide 2) From the same batch as slide 1, I closed the lid and added another 5 minutes of air fryer time. Since the lid was opened for inspection, there was a lot of heat loss, so this is not exactly the same as an uninterrupted 10 minute fry. The skin was still slightly undercooked but palatable. Steaming the perogies first and then air frying for 10 minutes produced similar results. 15 minutes (slide 3) This was a new batch, cooked from frozen with 15 minutes on the air fryer timer. Still too long. The skin was crisp on the outside but still had a chew to it. The filling that came out wa...

I was looking for a fairly portable "desk" for working on my laptop that was cheap, so I shopped AliExpress and Walmart online (both of which qualify for rebates through MyPoints ). Normally AliExpress (which can take over a month to mail Canada) has cheaper prices but this time Walmart came through with a comparable price. This desk by Living Basics is basically a desk for your laptop that also sits / goes over your laptop . Overall, not recommended but sometimes beggars can't be choosers, especially when it comes to price. Here are some observations: The tray is metallic, but the legs are NOT. They are plastic and not very stable. Left to stand on their own, they cause the desk to jiggle with every keystroke. I would have preferred much more solid legs instead of a metallic table. The table itself isn't the load bearing part of the desk and didn't really need to be metallic. Neither did the optional mousepad. The legs feel wobbly and weak, so I wouldn't ac...