1) Pineapple Express - Admit it, when you first read this, did you think it was a new kind of drink or some kind of crazy train something-or-other? When my colleague first started talking about this, I thought that she was for sure pulling my leg! Well, it's a real thing and it's a BIG DEAL here on the West Coast. Rather than trying to explain it using the correct terminology, I'll let you look it up.
A quick explanation is that it is a certain type of front that comes from down by Hawaii and brings huge amounts of precipitation to B.C. In two days we received twice as much rain as we normally get in November. In the mountains they get snow but a pineapple express also brings warm weather, so the fear is the snow will melt, causing huge flooding issues. Tack that onto the fact that this November has fully lived up to being the wettest month of the year up here, and you know the umbrellas have been out in full force.
2) Yam vs. Sweet Potato - These two foods have always intrigued me. A can of sweet potatoes shows orange root vegetables, but every grocery store/farmer's market I've frequented have the orange root vegetables labeled as yams and the brown-skinned ones are labeled sweet potatoes. I like to buy fresh but I'm never sure which ones to buy!
So I looked it up. Low and behold, you can't buy true yams in North America! (At least not in regular stores - probably can in stores that sell produce from all over the world.) There are actually two kinds of sweet potatoes - the light brown variety and the orange-flesh variety. The USDA actually allows the orange variety to be called yams to help with differentiation, but they aren't true yams. True yams grow in Asia, Africa, South America, and Oceania - and can grow up to 8 feet long. Imagine buying one and carrying it home!
Now I can buy the orange variety and know that I'm buying the real deal.
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