Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

  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...

The promotional images for Haldiram's Punjabi Samosa  make it look almost freshly made. Since we all know from pictures of burgers from burger chains that ad copy is probably not the same as the real thing, it really comes down to taste. The pictures below are from a 460 gram box purchased yesterday, stamped as Packed on Oct-2014 and Best Before Mr-2016. Obvious differences between the promotional pictures are: Appearance of the wrap: I baked mine and in the picture I had cut them open to re-heat on a Cuisinart Griddler Thickness of the wrap: At least twice as thick as in the picture, but there is still a good amount of filling. Colour and texture of the filling: (if you stop to think about it, obviously frozen = eventually looks different) Nowhere near the fresh yellow potato colour. Leathery peas. Potato mix is a ground mush. Not the same number of colourful peas -- and, to be honest, I wouldn't have liked too many peas, but it sure makes for a more colourful a...

As a LUVO investor, I have waited a long time for their product to be available in Canada. It's really ironic that it took so long because the founder Stephen Sidwell (co-founder of Gardein ) is local to Greater Vancouver. With any luck, their sister venture LYFE Kitchen won't be far behind. They are on Twitter with #LuvoEH . Here's the announcement blurb: We're excited to announce that Luvo will be making its Canadian debut, with the first selection of meals hitting the shelves on the west coast. Product will begin to arrive in IGA Marketplace locations across British Columbia in the coming weeks. Visit luvoinc.com for updates. Read how Luvo CEO Christine Day wants to reinvent frozen food in Canadian Business Magazine .

From the label: Great Taste, Calorie Free. How do we do it? Smooth and creamy Walden Farms Whipped Peanut Spread is made with natural fresh roasted peanut flavor. Delicious on crackers or toast. Calorie Free. No Sugar added. Fat Free. Gluten Free. As a peanut butter substitute, the main question is whether it tastes like peanut butter. And the answer is sort-of no. There is some roasted peanut flavour as advertised, but there is also a strong saltiness along with some sweetness -- sodium is rated at 105mg / 4% per 15 grams (1 tablespoon). I have a strong suspicion that the saltiness is there to distract you from the rest of the flavour. Beggars can't be choosers, so if you are picking up a fake peanut butter for whatever reason, then you either learn how to like it or go without peanut butter. If you can have the real thing, this will taste sort of gross. It's like smooth peanut butter, except it's wetter and the saltiness is quite off-putting. If you don't want...

President's Choice Sushi Bites  come in 416 gram boxes of 12. Each box has two separate plastic bags of six pieces of sushi, each about the size of a ping pong ball; and a pouch of "wasabi" dipping sauce. There is a "panko-style" breading around the sushi, meaning it will have a crunchy exterior -- probably to deflect attention from the fact that once it comes out of the oven, you will be having hot sushi. The product is basically as picture-perfect as on the packaging (!). That means there really is a chunk of shrimp or scallop in the middle. However, strangely enough, despite the fact that I could isolate a chunk of filling (about 1/3rd of a shrimp in volume), even when I dug it out and ate that filling on its own, I didn't get any clear shrimp or scallop flavour. The perils of freezing shellfish, I guess. Also, no seaweed flavour. The "wasabi" sauce does have a light wasabi flavour -- nothing that will clear your sinus painfully, like a chun...

Last week, my desktop was down because I had to mail all my memory strips for warranty replacement to Mushkin Enhanced . So I had to find other ways to amuse myself other than Skyrim . It was then that I discovered baking! And baking is total BS because all that lazy yeast takes so long to work. Then I discovered pretzels! Less waiting, more instant gratification. One very nice recipe I found was Papa Drexler's Bavarian Pretzels . Noob tips: Don't worry if you didn't soften your butter. Even if it's straight out of the fridge / freezer, you can melt it on the stove. Put it in some metal dish and sit it on the stove for a bit, then take it off so it won't burn. Let the residual heat soften the rest. You're going to need to turn on the stove for the baking soda bath in this recipe anyway. Microwave is also another option. Completely melted butter (not just softened) is needed in this recipe as well for brushing onto the pretzels right before baking. ...

I have to admit that the "President's Choice" (and "No Name") brands sold at Superstore have long been for me and my mom synonymous with "cheap knock-offs". You typically find them as reasonable facsimiles stacked in the supermarket aisles next to name brands of the same type of item. However, for many years now, around Christmas they have pumped out Christmassy items, and this year is no exception. At $2.48 per box this week, the President's Choice Candy Cane Eat the Middle First Cookies  looked like a good deal as a Christmassy thing to have. They were actually really decent. But let's start with what's bad with it: The packaging on the inside still leaves them vulnerable to being jostled out of their plastic cradles. If you are hoping for a picture-perfect presentable item, this won't be it. As you can see from the pictures, they aren't bad, but aren't exactly perfect either. This would be a minor quibble any other t...

What's probably best about Mary's Organic Crackers (black pepper) are its attributes: organic, gluten-free, vegan, non-GMO. And if you go onto their website, you'll discover even more strict quality control: Dairy Free, Wheat Free, Whole Grain, Kosher , No Hydrogenated Oils, No Trans-Fats. It's one of the lowest-common-denominator foods that everyone can eat. The worst part is that it tastes mostly like sesame seeds--Where's my black pepper? You have to eat enough for it to catch up to you as an aftertaste of mild heat in your mouth.

We all know that burger ads look way better than the actual product you get because those advertisement burgers are expertly crafted to show everything that you do get, just not all carefully positioned on one half of the perimeter. Nevertheless, it still always shocks me when product wildly differs from ad copy. Like Snyder's of Hanover Cheddar Cheese Pretzel Pieces. This is from their line of Flavored Pretzel Pieces . The image on the bag shows rather nice somewhat-presentable nuggets hovering around the size of the first joint of your smallest finger. And every one thoroughly and thickly coated with cheddar-yellow savoury powder on the non-baked side. Not too shabby. The reality is actually much closer to the images on their website which dhows a wilder array of sizes, some very small, and shapes that are more akin to what you get after smashing pretzels. Which may very well be what these are. The worst part of what the actual product looks like is the horrible suspic...

This week, Superstore is having a sale on various yogurts, including cartons of 16 x 100g packs of Yoplait for $4.98. An intriguing choice here is the " dessert yogurts " pack, featuring flavours such as Strawberry Cheesecake. I did not personally like it much because I felt that although I could taste the underlying dessert flavour, the sourness of the yogurt ruined it. However, you may like it and at $4.98 it's not pricey to try. A safer choice would be the fruit yogurts, also available in 16 x 100g packs, at $4.98 as well -- at least this week, anyway.

My mom had her eye on this T&T product line for a while, but being the frugal person that she is, she waited until it was on sale at Superstore this week and chose the "Cooked Pork & Shrimp Dumplings" to sample. These are basically siu mai . As usual it looks great in ad copy, but how good is it? For a mere eight dumplings, it is quite over-packaged on the inside, with a plastic tray that looks like an ice cube tray for freezers. Each of the eight dumplings sits in its own cubicle, which separates them and prevents them from clumping if you choose to microwave them -- one of the recommended preparation methods. My mom went with steaming. They came out extremely firm, almost rubbery -- basically similar to very firm fish balls . If we had read the label more carefully, we might have expected this -- it's COOKED Pork. This also explains why the meat is clay-grey in colour. If you had ordered siu mai at dim sum, you could expect a much more tender product, a...

For years now, you can get very cheap full-sized frozen pizza for about $5 at Superstore. Smaller "gourmet" ones used to come in at around $8, but this week there are some for sale at around $3. I picked up a couple of Buitoni  at $3.32 each (limit 2) and one McCain Ultra Thin Crust Roasted Mushroom and Garlic  at $3. I'm feeling veggie conscious so I picked only vegetarian pizzas. The Buitoni Spinaci Fresca was the first ever Buitoni product I've tried and it was shocking. The Nutrition Facts (which I never read beforehand) confirmed it wasn't a factory fluke -- 500 mg Sodium per 90 gram (quarter pizza) serving. The McCain Ultra Thin Crust Roasted Mushroom and Garlic wasn't significantly better at 310 mg Sodium per 86 gram (quarter pizza) serving, but the taste was what made the Buitoni pizza so surprising: It was as if someone had sprinkled extra salt on a pizza. It wasn't an experience of savoury-salty ingredients or sauce, but more like a...

Superstore is having a sale on various chips, including the Double Dutch line of thick chips from Old Dutch Foods , at $2.47 per pack (235 grams), maximum 4 packs at sale price. The product line has four flavours at this time: Buffalo Wing and Blue Cheese, Burstin' Onion, Bacon and Cheeseburger Sliders, Calamari and Tzatziki. I chose the latter two as I felt they would be the most complex and interesting flavours. As chips go, if they had been marketed as tasty, savoury chips, I would probably not have been so disappointed. They have the basics of being savoury and slightly over-salty, which tends to inspire addictive overconsumption -- which is what bags of chips are meant to do. But these have very specific simulated flavours, and against that benchmark, they fail: The Bacon and Cheeseburger Slider flavour didn't taste of bacon or meaty burger or cheese. The Calamari and Tzatziki flavour had a tangy zing reminiscent of what you get with tzatziki sauce , but no fried cala...

Are these the best fries ever? My mom spotted McCain Superfries Savoury Xtracrispy Wedges on sale at SuperStore and decided to give them a try. Despite the preparation instructions, we were going to try them in our so-far-very-disappointing Big Boss Oil-less Fryer . They didn't turn out so well. They were better on the grill, but not very crispy. She complained that they also took quite a long time on the grill or in the oven (plus there's the annoying turning) so with the last portions she deep fried them. And wow did they turn out great. The outer shell feels thin but crispy. Seasoning is noticeable but not too particularly strong. Inside, it was probably fluffy but the experience in my mouth was one of light creaminess. Good taste, excellent texture. Sodium content is off-putting but not really surprising.

Compared with regular skinless hot dogs ,  Yves Veggie Cuisine Jumbo Veggie Dogs  have a very well-duplicated good look and feel to them, probably because they don't have to try hard to look like unprocessed meat. The taste is rather bland in comparison, but also less salty if you are watching your sodium. If you are going to use them just like hot dogs -- that is, put them in a long bun and smother the taste with condiments -- then this Yves vegan hot dog will give you the look and feel without significantly missing the taste. However, if you really like the distinctive slightly sweet taste of hot dogs, then you will definitely miss that here. Whatever you want to say about the preparation of hot dogs , it does produce a reasonably tasty product, especially when lightly pan fried. If you focus on the flavour of the dog itself, then Jumbo Veggie Dogs won't be a good substitute.

Previously I mentioned having $1-off coupons from All You Need is Cheese , and I purchased two Boursin cheeses on sale at Superstore. The cranberry and pepper flavoured "spiced fresh soft cheese" is very much the same in consistency as the Boursin shallot and chive , except the flavour is more disappointing: If there were any pepper flavour, it was very subtle. To get any cranberry flavour, you really need to have at least a chunk of cranberry. Otherwise, the cheese tastes like cheese only. It's not so much flavoured cheese as it is dried cranberry bits mixed into the cheese. If you do get this, I recommend being generous with the portion to ensure that you have a good amount of cranberry included in whatever you have spread the cheese on. The cheese does have a richness which lends well to thicker spreads but won't give you that sick feeling from too much fat.

My free Spring 2014 copy of All You Need Is Cheese  included a number of expires-in-June coupons for cheese products. Somehow I ended up with two copies of the magazine, so I decided to get two different flavours of Boursin Spiced Fresh Soft Cheese .  Boursin is a type of Gournay Cheese . Red Chili Pepper flavour was sadly not available at the Metrotown Superstore where they were selling for a whopping $5.57 per 150-gram box. It is apparently not a particularly hot selling item because the ones I got had an April 2014 expiration and they were being discounted to $8.98 per two boxes. After applying the two manufacturer coupons from the magazine, the price still came out to a rather pricey $3.49 for each small portion. (Right now, Save-On-Foods is advertising Western Family cheddar cheese at $7.99 for a 700 gram block, and Safeway is advertising Kraft Cheez Whiz at $4.99 for a 900g bottle). The cheese itself is rather inconvenient to use. It crumbles easily, and can also ...

I wandered into African Breese Imports this past Saturday and on a whim picked up the "HOT" version of Ebesse Zozo Hot Sauce . My mom likes some heat to just about everything she eats, so I thought she might be curious to try some African-style chili sauce. Ebesse Zozo Hot Sauce (the "hot version") is quite spicy, and generally a good deal spicier than most chili sauces you can buy in a popular supermarket. You'd probably have to go to a speciality store like South China Seas or The Gourmet Warehouse  to get something comparable or stronger. Be sure to shake very well. Before you pour, check for large lumps. Break them up and then shake again. What's interesting to me about Ebesse Zozo is that the sauce doesn't have much flavour on its own. It's mostly just heat. So, you can throw it in anything or dip anything with it, and expect that the sauce won't overwhelm the taste of the food. It'll just add heat. Depending on what you have...

Previously I had tried the Daiya Cheddar Style Wedge . I was astounded to discover that the Daiya Jack Style Wedge was very similar in taste. In fact, if I didn't have them side-by-side, I might think them identical in taste. In other cheese-like qualities, my observations on the Cheddar all apply here. A quick look at the ingredient list shows one additional ingredient in the Cheddar Style Wedge: annatto , used in colouring cheddar cheese. Jack Style: Filtered water, tapioca flour, palm fruit oil, non-GMO expeller pressed canola and/or safflower oil, pea protein, coconut oil, inactive yeast, salt, vegetable glycerin, xanthan gum, vegan natural flavours, gum arabic, lactic acid (vegan, for flavor),titanium dioxide (a naturally occurring mineral), natural smoke flavour, vegan enzyme. Cheddar Style: Filtered water, tapioca flour, palm fruit oil, non-GMO expeller pressed canola and/or pressed safflower oil, pea protein, coconut oil, salt, inactive yeast, vegetable glycerin,...

For various reasons it is actually quite pointless to review Daiya Cheddar Style Wedge vegan cheese: There aren't many options out there, and for vegans there is really no comparison to real cheese because they don't have that dietary option. For the vegan-curious, however, here's what you're getting yourself into: Tastes like cheese? Not even close. You can tell that they are trying to simulate various attributes of cheddar, however. There's a creaminess in texture and a saltiness to simulate sharper, older, cheddar. Melts like cheese? It can melt, but generally you want it to touch other hot surfaces. For example, if you are putting it on pizza, it's nicer if it is sandwiched by crust and ingredients. When exposed to heat, it can form a film that holds the melted cheese inside, so you get blobs that don't spread. If you've tried putting cheese slices (like Kraft Singles processed cheese slices ) in the oven, you'll see the same beha...