Easy Vegan, Simple Recipes For Healthy Eating

The Vegans Are Coming: What To Serve

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How to better serve the new wave of vegans coming soon to your table.

Easy Vegan, Simple Recipes For Healthy EatingThis year you may find more vegans among your dinner guests. Last summer the United Nations advised that diets heavy in meat and dairy products are not sustainable, and animal-based agriculture harms ecosystems even more than the use of fossil fuels.

Yikes! A lacto-ovo vegetarian all my adult life, even I find the prospect of cutting eggs and dairy as well as meat from my menu daunting. Although some recipes in the cookbooks I use regularly are vegan, most call for some kind of eggs or dairy: cheese, egg noodles, yogurt, cream. Read more

Dollop Of Mayonnaise-iStock

We Rate Mayo, Peanut Butter And Mustard

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Want to know which is the best prepared mustard, PB and mayo? We have the answers here.

Dollop Of Mayonnaise-iStockBrand X is a Frugalbits column that pits supermarket house brands against an industry leader—how does Best Foods mayonnaise compare with 365 Everyday Value mayonnaise, Whole Food’s store brand, for example? Sometimes the industry leader has the best quality for the best price, sometimes not. Our judge in these matters is the seasoned and conscientious chef Glenys Morgan. Here she weighs in with her opinion on mayonnaise, peanut butter and mustard. Read more

Inn At The Union Club Interior

Victoria’s Sweet Secret: Inn At The Union Club

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Prices at this classic British-feel hotel on Victoria’s Inner Harbour are as old school as its style.

Inn At The Union Club Interior

 

TRAVEL ADVISORY | Quick. What hotel comes to mind when you think of Victoria, B.C.? If you didn’t say the Fairmont Empress Hotel I’d be shocked. With its historical blend of architectural styles, grand public spaces and elegant afternoon tea, the Empress easily maintains its number one position as the most British of places to stay in Victoria.

Yet there’s another hotel that looks and feels infinitely more British than the Empress and happens to be located directly across the street from it. Read more

Roots Village Bag In Vintage Tribe Leather

The Village Is The Bag To Collect Right Now

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Forget the Baguette and the Birkin, this modestly priced casual bag by Roots is the one to collect right now.

Roots Village Bag In Vintage Tribe LeatherMONEY WELL SPENT | If there were such a thing as an International Handbag Hall Of Fame, the highly coveted Baguette by Fendi, Birkin by Hermès, Speedy by Louis Vuitton and 2.55 by Chanel would be among the first bags inducted. It’s a tribute to their iconic good looks that these stratospherically priced luxury items are respun by their European manufacturers year after year and continue to maintain a “must-have” status.

Of course, it wasn’t hard to come up with this quartet of hypothetical inductees; the selection is so beyond question Anna Wintour will be rolling her eyes when she reads the list. But we do have one more, less-obvious submission some students of fashion insist belongs with this group. It’s a Canadian entry: the Village Bag by Roots. So why do they think this modestly priced everyday handbag deserves the same recognition as these pocketbook giants? Read more

Small Parcel - iStock

How To Receive Parcels At The U.S. Border

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It’s dead simple to have U.S. companies that don’t ship to Canada ship to the border instead.

Small Parcel - iStockSHOPPING AROUND | Last week we ran a story on down sweaters and discovered that some of the best-value models come from the cheap-chic Japanese fashion house Uniqlo, which does not ship to Canada. Uniqlo will, however, take orders for anything in its online catalogue over the telephone from the store in Manhattan and send it to any address in the U.S for a flat rate.

This got us thinking about how we might use the services of any of the parcel-receiving companies that operate just over the border in Blaine, Washington. We contacted four of them—Automated Mailing Services, Mail Boxes International, Pacific Mail and Parcel, and Security Mail Services—and found out the process is simple. Read more

Coco Rocha & James Conran

Decorating Secret Of The Stars: Multiply

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What do supermodel Coco Rocha, superstar writer/artist Douglas Coupland and super designer/TV personality Kelly Deck have in common besides B.C. roots? They know how to multiply.

Coco Rocha & James ConranMORE IS BETTER | Repetition, as designer Kelly Deck pointed out to me recently, is central to good interior design. “If we’re designing the interior architecture of the home, we often determine well in advance what repeating architectural elements we’ll use throughout the design. Perhaps the millwork and doorways will all have chunky wood wraps, or the hardware throughout will be square, polished and jewel-like. These are subtle uses of repetition, but they’re fundamental in creating an interior that feels quiet and unified.”

More literally, repetition is very effective in decorating, particularly when you’re trying to stretch a budget—or make a high-impact artistic statement. Here are the ways the model, the writer and the designer have multiplied to great effect. Read more

Boxee Box -dLink

TV + Internet: Thinking Inside The Boxee Box

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This digital receiver provides a dead easy way to stream FREE Internet content—in glorious HD—on your big screen TV.

Boxee Box -dLinkSHOPPING AROUND | When Apple TV relaunched last fall, I rushed out and got one and hooked it up to my television with an HDMI cable so I could gain easy, seamless access to Netflix and whatever other premium—a.k.a. paid for—audio/video content ITunes can persuade me to purchase from their online emporium. Now I’m wondering whether a Boxee Box would have been the smarter buy.

What Is Boxee Box? Read more
bob kronbauer, buntzen lake - katie cubitt

Bob Kronbauer’s Fave 5 Vancouver Haunts

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Internet maven Bob Kronbauer of the award-winning website Vancouver Is Awesome spreads some of that awesomeness around.

bob kronbauer, buntzen lake - katie cubittHe’s here, he’s there, he’s everywhere: Bob Kronbauer, founder and chief booster and bottle washer at the delightfully addictive two-year-old website Vancouver Is Awesome (VIA was recently voted the best local blog of 2010 by Georgia Straight readers), is a man on a mission to introduce residents and visitors to the fresh, cool and ephemeral things that make our region the sweet place to live that it is.

When he’s not overseeing a team of 20-plus pro bono editors and contributors (this is a not-for-profit operation) who produce daily features on a smorgasbord of tasty local topics mainly of the arts and culture variety, Bob somehow finds time to involve VIA in an inordinate number of outside projects, either partnering with organizations or going solo to work on festivals, events and exhibits.

And in addition to all this, he has found a few minutes to write for Frugalbits. O Lucky Us!

Bob Kronbauer’s 5 five free, cheap or worth it things to see, do or buy in Vancouver (or beyond) Read more
Patagonia Down Sweater

The Coolest—Warmest—Sweaters Are Down

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The coolest—and warmest—sweater around is one filled with down.

Patagonia Down SweaterPRICE CHECK | I’m cold, and my husband knows it. That’s why he gave me a sweater vest for Christmas. No, not one of those dorky argyle knitted numbers with big grandpa buttons—like Old School Archie might have worn—but a “down sweater” vest. It’s pretty cool and from the Gap.

Climbers and serious hikers know a down sweater is an ultra lightweight jacket or vest that delivers minimal weight, superb compressibility and superior warmth. Slim, not puffy, a down sweater is most often used as a midlayer or outerwear piece for colder climates, though its versatility and stylish good looks have begun to earn it a place on the street. Lately I’ve noticed more women and men trading in our regional uniform, the light-sucking polar fleece, for a vibrant but no-less-at-home-here down sweater.

Down Sweaters We Love Read more
Woman eye with extremely long eyelashes and golden makeup

Taking Your Eyelashes To Great Lengths

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Here’s a take on Latisse, the topical treatment that temporarily lengthens, thickens and darkens eyelashes, that you may not have read before.

Woman eye with extremely long eyelashes and golden makeupBEAUTY SMART | Recently I ran into Christina Tanti, the great friend of a friend of mine, someone I hadn’t seen for several months, and the first thing I noticed about her were her knockout eyelashes. Admittedly I’ve been on eyelash jag of late, what with the ongoing buzz about eyelash enhancement that includes everything from extensions and growth products to Katy Perry–style falsies. “I never noticed your eyelashes before; they look gorgeous,” I cooed.

“That’s because I didn’t have many before,” Tanti replied, uttering the magic word you hear everywhere in beauty circles these days: “Latisse.” Read more