January 2012 - Frugalbits

Exterior Wing Sang Gallery On East Pender Street, Vancouver

Visit The Wing Sang Soon—It’s Free!

January 31, 2012/1 Comment/in CANADIAN CONTENT, Culture & Leisure, Go Here Now, TRAVEL, View All Travel Stories /by Editor

Kudos to Bob Rennie for giving us another spectacular reason to love Vancouver.

FREE & SPECTACULAR | Vancouver real estate marketing mogul Bob Rennie’s private art gallery in the Wing Sang Building on East Pender Street has been open to the public just over two years now. I had been putting off seeing it for a completely irrational reason—you need to sign up in advance to get in. Lucky for me, friends added my name to their group of four planning a visit, and we all went for a free one-hour guided tour last week. Read more

Make Artisan Bread In Under 10 Minutes

January 30, 2012/4 Comments/in Easy + Quick = Delicious, FOOD, Food & Drink, Recipes, View All Food Stories /by Editor

You, your partner, your six-year-old kid: anyone can make sensational artisan bread with under 10 minutes of labour.

EASY BAKE | I’m not an accomplished cook. I can produce a nice meal and make complicated dishes when I need to, though I prefer to leave the culinary wizardry to my friends born with chef’s knifes in their mouths. Quick and easy are my things (along with tasty and attractive), so I was shocked when a good friend suggested I make my own bread. I’d been going on about how my family was plowing through Terra Breads’ pain de campagne to the tune of $10 to $15 dollars a week when she popped the suggestion.

“You’ve got to be joking,” I said. “Making bread is an art that takes years to perfect. I thought you knew me.” Read more

Get Nood Now: They’re Closing In Canada

January 27, 2012/3 Comments/in Home & Garden /by Editor

With prices slashed in a closing sale, these New Objects Of Desire are flying out the door.

STEALS & DEALS | —27-01-12—Nood, the New Zealand/Australia-based furniture and housewares retailer known for good modern design at reasonable prices, is shutting down operations in Canada. Their killer closeout sale is currently underway with everything in their two Metro Vancouver stores at 50 to 75 percent off the regular price. Though Nood won’t close its doors permanently until early March, we can’t imagine there’ll be much left to purchase by then (maybe its fabulous in-store hanging light fixtures?). Stuff is flying out of there really fast.

Here’s what we like best of what’s left. Read more

Are These The Best Fire Roasted Tomatoes?

January 26, 2012/2 Comments/in FOOD, Food & Drink, View All Food Stories /by Editor

How to make pasta simply amazing by just opening a can of tomatoes.

DINNER IN A MINUTE | When I really don’t want to spend time making dinner but can’t be bothered to go out or even order in, I love to boil up a big pot of water, throw in dry pasta and open a can of tomatoes. Oookay, you say, making nice but imagining I’m nuts to think plain spaghetti and canned tomatoes “straight up” could be anything but spectacularly boring. And maybe it would be if I opened your Hunt’s garden-variety dice, but the canned tomatoes I’m talking about taste nothing like that. Read more

Danier’s Great Deals For Leather Lovers

January 25, 2012/0 Comments/in CANADIAN CONTENT, Fashion & Beauty, Shops & Shopping, View All Fashion Stories /by Editor

And third, fourth and more if you shop at Danier’s frequent and fashionable leather sales.

SALES WE LOVE | Okay, so it doesn’t do bleeding edge leather the way Skingraft does—hey, who besides Nicki Minaj dresses like a rock star anyway—but Canada’s Danier makes clothing and bags with enough twist and bite to appeal to most leather-loving fashionistas. It also has wicked ongoing sales, which is how we came to discover it—and why you’ll want to check it out. Read more

Where To Find lululemon For Less

January 23, 2012/2 Comments/in CANADIAN CONTENT, FITNESS, Fitness & Health, Go Here Now, TRAVEL, View All Fitness Stories, View All Travel Stories /by Editor

Here is where you’ll find everyone’s favourite jock togs at a ridiculously discounted price.

OUTLETS WE LOVE | Generally I put little stock in outlet merchandise, imagining most of it to be cheaply made items by high-end labels looking to cash in on the wannabe crowd, but recently I found myself in the enviable position of cruising through two Lululemon Athletica Outlet stores (one off Interstate 5 in Burlington, Washington, and the other in Burnaby) and I have to say that I was dead wrong about outlet shopping where Lululemon is concerned. Read more

A Sweet Deal On A Sleepover In Seattle

January 19, 2012/1 Comment/in Go Here Now, TRAVEL, Travel, View All Travel Stories /by Editor

Minimoon, romantic getaway or whatever—here’s a sweet deal we’ve found on a romantic boutique hotel in Seattle.

TRAVEL ADVISORY | Married in a quiet ceremony over the holidays, our good friends B&C are just back from a “minimoon” in Seattle. “We want to go to Europe on a honeymoon but it’s cold there right now, so Seattle’s our stopgap,” says B. “We’ll take a longer trip this spring,” says his partner.

Even in the off-season, Seattle hotels never seem that cheap, but B&C did manage to find a great deal on an elegant little boutique hotel right downtown. Read more

Trader Joe’s Comes To Vancouver—Sort Of!

January 18, 2012/3 Comments/in CANADIAN CONTENT, Food & Drink /by Editor

Taking a page, and products, from the quirky Trader Joe’s supermarket chain, one idealistic, enterprising Vancouverite offers great groceries at great prices.

SHOPPING AROUND | “Somebody had to do it.”

That’s the first line of the manifesto taped to the window of Transilvania Trading, a tiny food emporium that recently opened in the nether reaches of West Broadway Street in Kitsilano, a shop destined to become a haunt among Vancouver foodies on the lookout for interesting, healthy packaged foods at reasonable prices. Transilvania’s current raison d’être is to sell a selection of mostly dry products from Trader Joe’s, quite possibly the coolest, quirkiest supermarket chain in the U.S., though that’s by no means the only stuff shop owner Mike Hallatt plans to stock in the future. Read more

The One Meal Fits All Way To Entertain

January 17, 2012/1 Comment/in BUY THIS. MAKE THAT., Easy + Quick = Delicious, Entertaining, FOOD, Food & Drink, View All Food Stories /by Editor

Time crunched but wanting to entertain, here’s the creative way one woman takes care of business.

SAVE TIME & ENERGY | If in-home entertaining is something you’d like to do more of but you don’t have the extra time or energy to put into an elaborate production, consider adopting the game plan Janie Collier uses to host twice-monthly Saturday night suppers.

Collier has developed one wonderful meal that she can serve to carnivores, vegetarians and vegans—and she repeats it—with slight variations and tweaks—in perpetuity. “If I had to come up with a new menu and source new ingredients every time I wanted to have people over, I just wouldn’t get around to it much.”

Janie Collier’s One Meal Fits All Saturday Night Supper Read more

Turn Your Instagram Images Into Prints

January 13, 2012/1 Comment/in Culture & Leisure /by Editor

Two of our favourite dead simple web apps can turn your digital Instagram photos into more permanent art-house prints.

FREE + CHEAP = AWESOME | If you own an iPhone and are not among the 15 million people who have already downloaded Apple’s FREE Instagram app, what are you waiting for? This dead simple photo manipulation program includes filters and other photo effects that can alter the way your iPhone 4 and 4S photos look. One of the reasons for Instagram’s instant popularity is that it makes photo sharing on Facebook, Twitter, et al., super easy, but I like it because it makes even my grossly pedestrian photos look infinitely more exciting. Read more