One of the reasons I used to read the Rebus books by Ian Rankin was for the junk food. Rankin's fictional members of the Edinburgh CID crammed all sorts of far from healthy junk food down their throats in the course of each book. I moved to Canada in the late 1990s and the Rebus books were a way of keeping up to date with the latest Scottish junk food trends. I'm fairly sure I remember one detective eating pakora flavoured crisps. Certainly, it was some exotic flavouring. I miss a lot of the Scottish junk food. We have junk food of our own here in Canada, or should I say North America, as very little of it is peculiar to Canada. You may have heard of poutine, chips smothered in gravy and cheese curd. That might be Canada's only major contribution to international junk cuisine. When I go to see my mum and dad I seek out Scottish junk food. They want to feed me good food. But I can eat good food here in Canada. When I'm in Scotland, I want bridies with weird fillings, crisps which claim to be baked bean flavoured or prawn and lemon or something like that, or stuff from the chip shop, maybe a plastic tray of cold pakora with strange spicy sauce, and all washed down with some oddly coloured soft drink. It's not a diet I'd like to live on for ever, but the way I look on it, I'm on holiday. And I do cave in and agree to eat some "good" food too when I'm in Scotland.