NEAROF

It’s blueberry season, in case you haven’t noticed. The grocery store flyers are starting to arrive on Edmonton doorsteps, announcing spectacular deals on massive quantities of blueberries. They look so tempting, and they’re so stupidly cheap – how could you possibly say no? But you’ve done this before, haven’t you? You bought a five-pound case [...]

Somewhere along the way, yogurt went from delicious, nutritious food to processed pseudo-food, a scientific experiment that spiralled out of control. See, bad things happen when you start counting calories obsessively. When faced with two yogurts on a dairy-case shelf, one that’s 250 calories per serving and another that’s 100, health-minded label-readers often pick the [...]

I like cooked broccoli. I like cheese. I like breaded fried foods. And so, it seems only natural that I’d like these Veggie Patch Broccoli Bites with cheese. The Look: Like chicken nuggets, minus the chicken. There’s no attempt at fake meat here. When you bite one open, it looks like pureed broccoli mush inside [...]

Ladies and gentlemen, the gentrification of the pizza pocket continues. From the greasy, doughy freezer-case junk food that populates dorm-room mini-fridges across the continent, to the much-more-adult, respectable calzone, pocket pizza comes in many varieties. Yet another curious high-brow variant? Aunt Trudy’s cheese and tomato pizza fillo pocket sandwich. It’s like spanakopita crossed with pizza, [...]

When it comes to calories and coffee, it’s the extras that’ll get you. While coffee itself is almost calorie-neutral, the amount of milk and sugar you add can take a mug of brewed coffee from a handful of calories to more than 100. If you have a few mugs throughout the day, that splash of [...]

Gelatin makes vegetarians cry. It’s everywhere you don’t want it to be, especially if you like candy. In ingredient list after ingredient list, it pops up and spoils the party. It’s in some gums, just about every marshmallow ever made, and in a variety of gummy candies. If you’re a vegetarian, you’re sure has hell [...]

As much as I like soy milk, I’ve never been able to bring myself to add it to my morning coffee. My lactose intolerance isn’t so bad that I can’t have a splash of milk in my cup of Ethiopia Sidamo at Starbucks. At home, there’s usually always a jug of Lactaid-treated organic milk in [...]

I couldn’t tell you how it happened, nor why it remains this way, but green onion cakes are synonymous with Edmonton’s festival season. For the uninitiated, green onion cakes are round, pancake-like discs of flour, water, chopped green onions, salt, and sesame oil, fried flat on an oil-drenched grill. That may not sound appetizing when [...]