Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

Casual get-together with a friend at The Festal Cafe today, during a weird limbo dead time between lunch and dinner so there were just a couple of patrons in the otherwise spacious diner of communal benches. The food was actually surprisingly good, and not much to complain about for the price, especially considering it's downtown location. Spicy Chicken & Waffles ($14.55) local free-range chicken breast, wild boar bacon, real maple syrup, no grain waffle bread, coleslaw, side of cassava chips I would really have liked to know it was going to be a cold sandwich. Not skimpy with the slab of chicken, and for all white meat chicken breast, it was actually fairly moist and tender. Overall I thought this was really not that great in composition. If you deconstruct it you do find a nice slab of chicken sitting in coleslaw. Those cassava chips are winners. Really good crunch to them without any oil. Butternut Lasagna ($14.95) local grass-fed beef, butternut squash, spin...

Today we have a special GUEST POST by Virgil Anderson of  Mesothelioma.net The paleo and ketogenic diets are more popular than ever before and for good reasons. They have been shown to be beneficial in a number of ways, from cutting out processed foods to helping people lose weight. There is also evidence that these diets may provide important benefits for people living with and being treated for various types of cancer, like mesothelioma or lung cancer . The Paleo Diet and its Health Benefits The paleo diet has a pretty simple basis: don’t eat anything our Paleolithic ancestors wouldn’t have eaten. The Paleolithic was before agricultures, so that means no grains or dairy. Instead, on the paleo diet you eat meat, game, poultry, fish, vegetables, seeds, fruits, and nuts. Although there may have been beans and legumes around 10,000 years ago, the paleo diet avoids these as well. Perhaps the best thing about the paleo diet is that it relies on whole foods and eliminates process...

Living Cafe in Steveston (in Richmond) is a quaint little place this is deli on one side, dining room on another. The dining space is simple, sunny, and spacious and displays local artwork on the walls. The menu is an interesting one that supports not-easily-found diets, such as raw, paleo , superfoods , and funny good-for-you ingredients like chlorophyll and red reishi mushroom . For sugar, they use the 1:1 sugar substitute xylitol . Vegetarian and vegan diets are of course supported. They also carry a selection of Anderssen's Life Flaxrolls . The online menu is missing at least one page. Black Coffee ($3) Enriched coffee grown and cultivated by experienced artisans and mixed with their proprietary, pesticide-free, USDA certified organic Ganoderma Lucidium ("red reishi mushroom"). Tastes like coffee, but seemed a bit on the weak side. Presumably the $3 is for the mushroom content. Red reishi mushroom is supposed to be on the bitter side, so it blends nicel...