Baten Kaitos and it's prequel are some of my favourite Gamecube games - I'm replaying them at the moment on emulator. Weird, but with a distinct character and a battle style that was unusual and engaging. They also nailed the prequel with the same game engine concept with Origins, giving a game that change the…

Not just that, but they've packed in the maximum of treacly inspirational stories and interviews for all the successful American athletes, complete with music cues and tear filled "I owe it all to my parents/kid/wife" statements.

Apparently there's more than one vampire crime solving series filmed and set in Canada.

Police Academy IV: Citizens on Patrol. In my defence, I was fourteen when it came out, which is about the maturity level the movie is aimed at.

Girls names definitely fluctuate a lot more than boys. And I've got a Clarence, Elmer, Fred and Ernest in my parents and grandparents.

They're cycling around again on some of the grandma names, too. The top baby girl names at the moment include Charlotte, Hannah, Emma and Isabella, which are definitely creaky old lady names in my mind (last peaking in the late 19th century)

Oh yeah, flashback time (specifically, the edition of the book to the lower right of the header image).

Oh Henry! for me.

I think you're thinking of the Bathtub Festival, another Nanaimo Tradition (when the Bathtub Races are held). And hey! another Nanaimoite! (I've run into people from Nanaimo in locations including the elevator of my apartment building in Los Angeles, a public bus in Taiwan, and the summit of Mauna Kea in Hawaii).

Montgomery's work does have that undercurrent of darkness - unwanted, emotionally starved (sometimes abused) children, lonely, thwarted adults. As a kid, I tended to skim over that and focus on the fun stuff, but re-reading her books as an adult the bleakness of some of the characters' situations stands out more…

The little side dishes are collectively known as 小菜 (xiǎo cài), which literally means "small vegetables". They're small, typically about $1 US each, cold, and mostly vegetable or tofu based. Cucumbers marinated in rice vinegar with garlic and chilis, and sweet-sour lightly pickled cabbage (known as Taiwanese kimchi)…

Basically, in the West tofu is this thing vegetarians eat. But in East Asia, it's simply an ingredient. So mixing tofu and meat is no weirder than having beans and meat in the same dish would be in the West.

I hadn't thought about that, but you're completely right - salmon roe (and flying fish roe) are eggs, not fish. However, you have to kill the fish to get them out (unlike chicken eggs), so I suspect ovo-lacto vegetarians will still avoid them.

And poutine made with Japanese curry sauce as the gravy is delicious.

But we'll always have embarrassing mispronunciations of poutine.

If I watched this trailer without the title attached, I'm not sure I'd pick up on it being a King Arthur movie - I'd assume it was a random movie trying to capitalize on the success of A Game of Thrones. There's a few quick shots of the sword in the stone, and a mention of Excalibur, that's about it - the rest is…

I suspect the issue is not just washing, but sterilizing to industrial standards.

Yes. Yes you can. Even to the office break-room as long as you are willing to share. I like the giant piles in the grocery store, with a pair of oven mitts on top for handling, and the stack of ready to eat segments, in case you don't want a whole one.

I've had visitors ask me about the "sewer problem" and had to break it to them that they were smelling something edible. And unlike something like blue cheese, you can smell it across 6 lanes of traffic on a hot summer evening. Over the years I've come to quite like it, and will actually get cravings for it.

Raw jicama is fine. I think it's cassava that has to be extensively treated before it's non toxic. And there are some vegetables, like fresh bamboo shoots or taro, that can be irritants or cause kidney stones if not cooked properly. Or, like water caltrops, need to be cooked to kill parasites.