'tis the season...

It's hard to believe that I've already been off work for a week and a half. Between preparing for the arrival of Em, Christmas and ongoing home renovations that we're trying to get done before the 25th, time has really flown by. I was just starting to get stressed about it all last night when there was knock at the front door. Before I could waddle my way over to open it, I heard a chorus of young girls singing Christmas carols. I opened the door to find a group of about 8 girls ranging in age from 8 to 14 gleefully serenading me. And they were good! I don't know who they were but they all seemed to have the same logo somewhere on there clothes that had the words "dance" and "academy" in it. They were collecting donations for the food bank and as I gathered a few cans from the pantry they continued to sing. It was a reminder of what this holiday season really should be all about. So today, as I finish my shopping and run all of my various errands, even though the malls will be crowded with cranky last minute shoppers, I will think of my happy carolers and smile.

'tis a gift to be simple...

We just received a copy of the most recent Hammacher Schlemmer catalogue in the mail. It's their Christmas gift guide and it is full of wacky gadgets. Here are a few that cracked me up. Or made me scratch me head. Or both.

The Fish Agility Training Set

Seriously? Are there really people out there who train their fish to do tricks?

The Personalized Woven Photographic Image Throw



Because nothing says creepy like a giant picture of your loved ones on a blanket.

The Star Wars Nutcracker Set
Honestly, I don't even know what to say about these.

The 14 M.P.H. Cooler
Now this I can get on board with! I might need it for next summer's camping trip.

The Talking Pet Bowl


This would totally freak my cat out! It might actually send him over the edge.

Hope this helps you with your Christmas shopping!

away in a manger...

I was supposed to be out with the girls tonight but sadly, I'm at home fighting off a cold. I'm determined to not let it get the better of me so I'm medicating myself and resting. I'm pretty exhausted and will be heading to bed soon. But before I do, here are some pictures of the gorgeous nativity scene that Christine & Stewart gave us for Christmas.

Not being a very religious person, the nativity scene was not a part of my Christmas decor. Honestly, I find most of them rather tacky. But this one is absolutely beautiful! I don't know who the artist is, but Christine found it somewhere in Waterloo, Ontario and there are quite a few ceramic artists in that area. I love the modern feel of this set. It's almost a shame that I'll be packing it up to sit in a box for the next 11 months.

the baby Jesus in the manger

dove & fish

three wise men

I'm off to bed. Night all.

cover me

For some reason, I had this crazy idea that instead of buying gifts this year, I would knit them. My goal was to knit blankets. 3 in total. One for my mother in law, one for my father in law and one for my brother & sister in law. As of 11pm on December 25, 2 of the 3 blankets were completed. We exchanged gifts this afternoon, on December 26. Luckily, we thought of a good alternate gift for my mother in law, since I haven't actually started her blanket yet. I don't feel too guilty, since her birthday is late in January and I should have her blanket done by then. Right?

In the meantime, here are the ones that I did manage to complete.


This one doesn't look like much. It's pretty basic, just a whole lot of knit stitches. The beauty of this blanket is the yarn. Lion Brand Wool Ease Thick & Quick. It is thick and has a great weight to it. Perfect for a cuddly, warm blanket. The pattern is called Plush Throw and is available for free on the Lion Brand website. (You need to set up an account to access the free patterns, but believe me, it's worth it.)

Same blankie. Folded and ready for the gift bag.

This one I am really proud of. (Ignore the unfinished-ness of it. I finished weaving in the ends before we gave it to them.)


The Cable Comfort Throw, also from Lion Brand, looks complicated, but the pattern is quite easy to knit. New knitters are terrified of cables. But they are so easy! Just follow the instructions. The first time I knit cables I thought, "That's it? What are people so freaked out about?" For me the challenge with this one was sewing the 5 panels together. I generally avoid patterns that require seaming. I'm just bad at it. But this one wasn't horrible. After this experience, I may even feel brave enough to knit a sweater!

A close up of those scary cables.

The recipients of these blankets were genuinely appreciative. It's nice to be able to give practical, homemade gifts. Now if I just had more time for knitting...

merry Christmas to all...

Merry Christmas everyone! I have been a bit of an absentee landlord as of late. Life has been ridiculously hectic. So much to blog about, but no time to do it. I'm off work until January 7, so I should have plenty of time to catch up on the myriad of things I have to tell you about. But for now, a festive holiday meme. Please play along.

CHRISTMAS MEME

1.Real tree or artificial or treeless? Any special traditions with the tree?
Real all the way! 2 trees actually. One in the living room upstairs, with a lovely, mature, red & silver theme. One downstairs in the rec room with Disney ornaments. I know, it's commercial. But hey, isn't that what Christmas is all about?

2. Eggnog or Cider or Mulled Wine?
mmm...Eggnog. One of the only ways I will consume rum.

3. Spiritual or Secular celebration?
Totally secular. If in doubt, read my previous post.

4. Favorite Christmas music?
Charlie Brown Christmas.

5. One special holiday memory
1998. 7 days before Christmas. Steve and I got engaged. :)

I love this bar...

Now this is my kind of restaurant!

In today's Globe and Mail Beppi Crosariol reported on a unique Vancouver restaurant. All they serve is wine, cheese and meat. No fancy kitchen or gourmet chef necessary. This is totally up my alley! One of my favourite dinners is what Steve and I call the snacky dinner. A couple of different cheeses, some nice cured meat, gourmet olives, a few crackers and a good bottle of red wine. Kind of a rustic European thing. In fact, the snacky dinner has kind of become our Christmas Eve tradition. We spend Christmas Day and Boxing Day with family so Christmas Eve is our time. We lay out a yummy spread and open the presents we bought for each other. Just the two of us. It's a nice tradition. But I digress.

I've included the article below even though I linked to it above. The Globe is one of those annoying newspapers that cuts off access to articles after a few days, unless you are an online subscriber.

Rise of the anti-restaurant
It's in a seedy alleyway, has no kitchen and never bothered to hire a chef. But Sean Heather's meat, cheese and wine bar is anything but a misstep - instead, it's turning the restaurant model on its ear

BEPPI CROSARIOL
From Wednesday's Globe and Mail
September 26, 2007 at 10:22 AM EDT

VANCOUVER — Want to succeed in the restaurant business? Consider some tips from Sean Heather:

Find a rundown space in a seedy alleyway with no pedestrian traffic or other businesses; replace the existing wood flooring with bare concrete; set up a long, picnic-style, communal table and offer patrons paper napkins instead of linen. Oh, and don't bother with unnecessary details like hiring a chef or installing a stove; buy ready-made food and slice it up onto plates.

Welcome to Salt Tasting Room, a 14-month-old charcuterie restaurant and wine bar in Vancouver's Gastown that has not only played to positive reviews but also emerged as one of the most envied, and unlikely, successes in this city's hyperactive fine-dining scene.

From a culinary standpoint, Salt taps the growing appetite for raw-milk cheeses and locally cured meats with farmhouse provenance. There's ash-covered camembert from Moonstruck Organic Cheese Inc. on Salt Spring Island, for example, and wild-boar headcheese that Mr. Heather sourced from Oyama Sausage Co. on Granville Island.

There's also no denying the cheap-chic allure of the minimalist design, complete with a chalkboard that serves as the menu and a Ferrari-red, hand-cranked Italian meat slicer - the latter one of several ideas borrowed from New York superchef Mario Batali.

But it's the novel - at least for Canada - kitchenless fine-dining concept that has been turning professional heads and pulling in a steady stream of hungry and curious chefs in their off hours.

"It's genius, it really is," said Jeff Van Geest, chef-owner of 4-1/2-year-old Aurora Bistro. "I think every restaurateur in the city is saying the same thing: 'Why didn't I think of that?' "

Mr. Van Geest says he resists even categorizing Salt as a restaurant because Mr. Heather and his business partner, Scott Hawthorn, have brilliantly turned the traditional business model on its ear, avoiding the crippling costs that can ultimately capsize even the best cooking.

Call it the anti-restaurant.

"The staffing issues, the equipment, all the overhead things that make our [profit] margins so tight in restaurants and make us struggle for every cent - he's eliminated all of that, and he's full most of the time," Mr. Van Geest said.

Salt is also the model around which Mr. Heather, who owns several other local establishments including the Irish Heather gastropub and Salty Tongue deli, is building his expansion plans. Get ready for a bigger original Salt in Blood Alley, two more Salts in Vancouver, a "seasonal" Salt for summer wine tourists in the Okanagan Valley and, if Mr. Heather can find the right eastern partners, a Toronto Salt.

On a recent Tuesday afternoon, Mr. Heather, 41, who grew up and trained as a chef in Ireland before moving to Canada and eventually launching the Irish Heather 11 years ago, spoke candidly about Salt's economics.

"We didn't have a lot of business today, but I still made a hundred bucks," he said, sitting at a 6-metre-long communal table that runs along one side of the dimly lit, main dining area. "I don't need to do a lot of business to make money. My rent is not high. I'm in an alleyway. I have no chef - that would cost me 50 or 60 grand a year. There's no waste. There's no gas. There's no grease trap, there's no [ventilation] hood."

Another key to Salt's profitability is the autocratic menu. The minimum food order must consist of at least three items, whether meat or cheese, at a cost of $15. You can't just taste one for $5, an option that has scuttled many a wine-bar concept in the past. Add a glass of good wine and the typical order doesn't take long to exceed $30.

"We have an average spend of 35 bucks a head here, and that rivals most restaurants, but we're not cooking anything," Mr. Heather boasted in a cheerful tone that suggested gratitude for what he calls his "Irish luck" rather than any sort of arrogance.

Because of Salt's success, Mr. Heather has dropped long-standing plans to open a more expensive, hot-food restaurant that was to be called Pepper. Instead, he says, he is now expanding into an unused basement area with Salt Cellar, virtually doubling the 800-square-foot dining space and storage area he now has. Then, next year, he will expand the concept to a location on Main Street and one in Kitsilano.

Not that salami-slinging wine bars are new. Italy has countless. But as Mr. Heather and other restaurateurs note, the bare-bones concept is virtually unknown in Canada.

In fact, Mr. Heather had to lay some blarney on provincial liquor inspectors to get his alcohol licence. Aware that "liquor-primary" licences for bars are rarely issued any longer, he decided to ask for a "food-primary" licence for his wine bar concept. But his kitchenless blueprint perplexed the booze patrol.

"So, about two weeks into discussions with these guys, we stopped calling it a tasting bar and we started calling it a sushi bar," Mr. Heather recalled, referring to the Japanese raw fish delicacy.

"Once they heard 'sushi,' they said, 'Oh, yeah.' They had a reference point. It was only until about two weeks before we opened that, when the guys came to do actual inspections, they were like, 'Where's the sushi?' I said, 'It's kind of like sushi, but it's meat and cheese.' ... We were a sushi bar on the books for a long time."

The other virtue of not needing a chef is that Vancouver is currently facing a shortage of culinary talent following a flurry of fine-dining openings during the past 18 months. "We could open up 20 of these and not have to worry about that problem."

With Salt, Mr. Heather has also shrewdly sidestepped another of the big nuisances of running a restaurant: customer complaints. "You go to a restaurant and you want your steak done medium-rare and it comes back medium, 'Nah, nah, nah.' You come here, if you've got a problem, we can say, 'Talk to the cheese maker. We just cut the cheese.' "

As for the competition, Mr. Heather believes he's eluded that, as well. "As more and more restaurants open up, we become a place that you could come to before or after. We're not competing. We're complementing all these new restaurants."

If Salt does eventually expand to Toronto, it could face competition there, however. Terroni, the popular downtown chain of southern Italian-style trattorias, is expanding to a big new location in the historic courthouse building on Adelaide Street East, with plans for an adjacent, but separate, wine bar that will offer a bare-bones cured-meat-and-cheese menu and have a strict policy of not serving hot food from the Terroni kitchen.

"They can have a nice cutting board with specialized meats, prosciuttos and salami," said Cosimo Mammoliti, Terroni's owner. "But they cannot have food in the bar."

Mr. Mammoliti says he believes Toronto is ripe for an "authentic" Italian wine bar. "People need a place like that to go to - even if they're going to dinner somewhere else," he said. "It's hard to find that any place in the city."