1.--What This Blog is About and a Yummy Treat Called Screamers

Let's face it; British Columbia is a fantasy-land of food opportunities. And I'm not just talking about fine dining. There is good food everywhere.  The crazy thing is, you have to look for it. We B.C.ers have a tendency to take a lot of this stuff for granted. It's just there, like trees and rain. But sometimes we stumble on something and we are amazed that no one else seems to know about it, at least in our circles. We talk about it for a little while, and then that too is just there.

But more people should know about those places and foodstuffs. I'll leave the grand restaurants in Vancouver to the other bloggers and magazine writers. This blog is just about food I've found, food I've tried, and where to get it, especially in the Lower Mainland of British Columbia. I'll put a new post in once a week (hope springs eternal), and I hope some of you out there will try this stuff. Because it's great stuff, it really is.

Take, for instance, screamers.

That word means a lot of different things to different people, but here in a small corner of the lower mainland it refers to a summer treat you really shouldn't miss. You can only find screamers in a couple of places in the lower mainland, most notably in a convenience store at the corner of 88th Ave. and 128th St. in Surrey, and a convenience store at 116th St. and 96th Ave. in Delta. (There's also one at the Cloverdale Super Market, corner of 176th st. and 58th Ave., but the icecream machine was out of order when we went in and they only had three types of slushie) When you go into the store you go straight to the slushie machine as if you were going to make a slushie.  Pick the size container you want (small, medium, large & extra-large available) and select which slushie flavor you want to start with. Put a little in your slushie cup.

But wait! Right beside the slushie machine is a vanilla soft ice-cream machine. Yeeeeesssss. Put a little in your slushie cup. Then go back to the slushie machine and put more slushie in, maybe the same flavor, maybe another another one. Then go back to the ice-cream machine, and so on, until your plastic cup is full of artificial, calorie-laden, colorful goodness. A large one of these beauties is a little over three bucks. My sister and I tried a cherry Crush slushie screamer and my brother-in-law tried the rootbeer slushie screamer. He said his tasted just like a rootbeer float. They look like this:

--That's the cherry Crush screamer .

I'm telling you, it's a spoil-me-rotten moment. Best three-fifty you will ever spend, treat-wise, on an August day.