My sister treated us to a lovely lunch at Salmon House on the Hill in West Vancouver. Ds#2's mushroom ravioli was to die for (don't ask how I know, but let's just say that I'm not above shoving a child out of the way to get to good food), but the dessert was equally amazing. Here it is, the tiramisu of your dreams:
Because there is a huge Italian population in Vancouver (this is especially for Diane), we can get some great Italian food. 
If you think this looks great, you should see the duck prociutto. Mmmm.The guys walked nearly every day to a gelato place, Dolce Amore, which is about 15 minutes from my parents' place where we stayed. Here's the sampling from one evening: blackberry/cherry, menta, and passionfruit.
Aside from the lamb kebabs we ordered at the Afghan Horsemen, ds#2 ordered an appetizer sampler which included hummus and sabzi mast (a spinach dip):
Other good things to have in Vancouver are seafood. One night we went to Monk's Upstairs for dinner, and I ordered sole, which came with roasted purple potatoes, beets, and sea asparagus:
Ds#1 ordered mussels:
Ds#2 ordered oysters:
A visit to see my parents would not be complete without some roast meats, the most popular of which is roast duck (the top hanging carcass; the bottom ones are chicken):
Also a must have is dimsum. I believe outside of Hong Kong, the best HK-style dimsum is to be found in Vancouver. 
And now for the Bad (I apologize in advance for grossing out the vegetarians in our midst). 3 guesses as to what this is:
Anyone who's seen Bizarre Foods on the Travel Channel will recognize it as swallow's nest, or as I like to call it, bird spit. Talk about gross and not environmentally friendly.Other weird things that Chinese/Asian people eat? How about boneless chicken feet? As if regular chicken feet isn't strange enough.
Chicken feet not your thing? How about pig feet, then? We had this pig feet dish at a Shanghai-style dimsum place:
If animal extremeties don't appeal to you, then they've got internal parts to offer. How about tripe? It's just offal! (Sorry, bad pun!)
Lastly, we have the Ugly category. At the Granville Island market, ds#1 took some photos of things that aren't very attractive. I'll only share one here:
Speaking of ugly, although we didn't eat it, here's a leopard slug we came upon on one of our hikes to Lynn Headwaters:
To finish up on a "happy" note, here's one of the interesting signs at the food court at Crystal Mall in Burnaby, a suburb of Vancouver:
"To accomplish great things, we must dream as well as act." ~ Anatole France (1844 - 1924)
