Life in the Lower Mainland (BC, Canada)

Every once in a while, my mom reminisces about her childhood days growing on the farm and how they used to have pigs. And invariably she ends up talking about how cruel it is to eat those poor pigs. Closet vegan? She still buys ham and bacon and she talks about how pricey all that phoney meat stuff is. And going vegan can actually be pricey. Like "Nacho Cheese", the "vegan gourmet cheese alternative" from Follow Your Heart . It retails at Karmavore in New Westminster for $5.89 for a 284g pack ($2.07 per 100g). Compare with, say, a Black Diamond Cheese Bar ($7.97 per 700 grams at Superstore , or $10.47 regular price; sometimes as low as $4.97 at No Frills ). Still, I wanted to let my mom try it. In case she really did want to act on her don't-eat-the-poor-pigs mindset. This soy "cheese" from Follow Your Heart is wet like tofu but firmer. It's orange, so you might expect a strong cheddar flavour, but the taste reminds me more of nachos than c...

Bishop's seems to have fallen off the foodie radar, but it is still an excellent little restaurant. Superb food, superb service. It's been a long time since I went to Bishop's. My dining buddy and I talked about it since October, and finally set a date in early January. Bishop's did a quick January renovation, and our date got pushed back to January 25th -- And for this inconvenience, they surprised us with two glasses of champagne! Wow! If you haven't been by in a while, it's repainted but still retains the Native American artwork theme which to me feels a bit out of place compared to the structure and colour of the room. It is all on loan from a gallery and every piece is for sale, although that fact is not crassly advertised with price tags. One of the waiters had a native american artwork themed tie, but the hostess informed us it was merely a happy coincidence and a gift from his wife. Bishop's is a very different dining experience from any other...

EDIT: Jan-24th -- Price correction to $8.90 after tax. I was on the Food Bloggers Food Cart Crawl when we walked by Zaatar Mediterranean Hummus Bar on Davie. The restaurant name has hummus all over it, but what caught my eye was the picture of Shakshouka on their street sign. It looked YUM and I knew I had to try it. It tasted... totally not what I expected. The restaurant has been open for about 7 months. The owner is Israeli, but it's not a "family restaurant" per se. On this Saturday morning, the cashier was Ukrainian and the chef was French. Not the best start if you're looking for authenticity, but hey, as long as the chef can serve out delicious food, I won't complain. The website is, sadly, rubbish. Zaatar even points to Urbanspoon for their menu (Huh?). You may wonder why I went to a hummus bar but didn't order any hummus. I'm wondering that myself. Anyway, if you don't know what it is, shakshouka is "a dish of eggs poached in...

A few days ago, I wrote about having purchased some survival food bars for my emergency readiness backpack . I also got a pack of the 3600 calorie food bars (feeds 1 person for 3 days) to try out. Today, I decided to eat just the survival food bars, as well as only a moderate amount of water, to see how I'd make out. Each pack divides into 9 portions, each of which is about 5 cm x 5 cm x 3cm, or approximately two-thirds the size of a standard nanaimo bar. Three portions a day is the estimated intake for one adult person. I further divided each portion into half, and aimed to eat one half portion every three hours, starting from 10 o'clock. The check-in times would therefore be at 10, 1, 4, 7, 10, 1. Since I work graveyards, my "day" starts at 10pm. My job is pretty sedentary, with some walking about now and again. Of course I did not gorge beforehand, as that would be cheating. BAR #1 10 PM: Ate 1/2 bar. Had 2 cups of water (i.e., ~ 1 mug) of water. 1 AM: ...

During the dine-out with the International in Vancouver Social Meetup Group at La Bodega on Saturday, our server popped by to check on us once our group paella order had come out. She offered to tell us the story of how paella ("for the lady") came to be: Once upon a time, a beautiful princess was in love with a farmer, but forced to wed someone else. The farmer loved her and would have given her the world, but he was poor. He was a fabulous cook, however, and created this dish for her. In it, he put "the world" -- foods from the field, the land, and the sea (vegetables, meat, shellfish) -- as well as his heart, represented by slices of bright red peppers. In our group we also had a young Spanish lady. She wasn't able to confirm the server's story of paella, but she offered to tell us the story of how tapas came to be: In the distant past, there were occasionally flies in restaurants. To protect glasses of wine from flies, people would put small sauc...

If you dine as as group at La Bodega , you're pretty much forced into the Spanish culture of communal eating and shared plates -- at least that was how it turned out Saturday night when the Internationals in Vancouver Social Meetup Group went there. Somebody dropped the ball big-time here. DON'T let it happen to you! Our dining group was pretty big: About 30 people turned up out of about 40 RSVPs. Although 30 sounds like pretty big numbers for a restaurant with a small storefront ( which you can see on Google maps ), it's actually not too bad. Inside, the restaurant is actually quite spacious: There's an upper floor and fairy tight seating -- as much as 8 to one of their slightly rectangular tables, and chairs sometimes placed literally side by side with no room in between. We were one of two very large groups, and there was still seating for smaller groups of 4-6. Downstairs it looked like it was mostly a long bar. La Bodega opened in 1971, and apparently since t...

Have you ever tasted survival food bars? Now that the devastating quake in Japan has very decidedly fallen off front page news (possibly since the depressing news is that Japan is probably irradiated stem to stern), the topic of emergency preparedness is as tasty as stale bread -- But it doesn't mean you shouldn't be prepared. Previously I had written about Emergency Preparedness Kits , such as the ones from The Red Cross . Depending on where you get them, kits may come WITHOUT food or water. The Red Cross ones come with a huge collapsible plastic container for water, but it's carried separately from the backpack, and not really that portable or convenient. Also, the plastic smell leeches into the water and makes it stale, so refreshing the water periodically is important. You can get both food and water separately, and in surprisingly compact 3-day supply amounts. And if you are in British Columbia, Canada, 72hrs.ca offers free shipping with a $60+ order . 12 packs...