EASY & DELISH | If you’re casting around for an Easter adventure to share with the junior cooks in your life, these quick-made no-bake chocolate-and-peanut butter bird’s nest cookies are a slam dunk.
BUY RIGHT | When it comes to sweeping indoors, I prefer an angled broom with a dirt-catching split-fibre tip that can wiggle into corners (Vileda makes a good one). Outdoors, I want a broad brush that can cover more ground and sweep away heavy debris so I always go for a pusher, though I had no idea how inefficient most push brooms are until I tried a Schmutz Haken, the silly looking sweeper pictured here. Read more
TRAVEL ADVISORY | While the market for revolving restaurants is hot in the Middle East and Asia, no one is making new ones in North America, and the multitude of revolving restaurants here, most of which were built in the 1960s and 1970s, are shutting down.
What was once the chicest place in town to take your sweetie to eat is now—at least in North America—considered a tourist destination or the spot to dine with old aunties in taste-bud decline.
Too bad about these closures because revolving restaurants offer an unrepeatable experience, a one-of-a-kind way to see a city. In Vancouver we remain lucky: we still have three revolvers open for business. Read more
BUY RIGHT | There are plenty of dog owners who think that a leather leash is the only way to go, but I’m not one of them. A friend gave us an expensive harness leather lead for our pooch when he was a pup, and beautiful as it is, I’ve used it only once because I found it stiff and unwieldy. Yes, I know that leather put to work will soften over time, but nylon-webbing leashes are pliable from the get-go. They work perfectly fine for my needs, particularly the inexpensive brand I use that has a helpful feature no good dog leash should be without. Read more
DO IT YOURSELF | Do you have a hodge-podge of unattractive garden pots and vases collecting dust in the recesses of your storage area, containers you’ve been thinking about shipping off to the Sally Ann? Well, if you like the look of concrete, a binding agent the late, great Canadian architect Arthur Erickson called “precious …. the marble of the 20th century,” you could mix up a batch of the material and paint it on your old planters the way I did on mine. It made me want to keep them. Read more
EASY & DELISH | Several weeks ago, I was invited to a dinner party and asked to supply dessert. I wanted to take along Caren McSherry’s no-brainer five-minute banana ice cream (CLICK HERE for the recipe) but did not have overripe bananas on hand, could not find any at the grocery store and lacked the (several days) time it takes to force-ripen fresh bananas in a brown bag.
I was explaining this predicament to my foodie friend Anne when she suggested I speed-ripen my bananas by popping them the oven. “This trick is so easy,” she told me. “And oven-ripened bananas taste just as sweet as ones that have been left to over ripen on their own. I love they way they look, too. Their transformation is so radical it makes me think of magic.”
Here’s how Anne ripens bananas, and what yellow bananas look like after they’ve been in the oven. Read more
CREATIVE SOLUTION | Try as I might, I can’t seem to keep hair out of the bathroom drain, where it diabolically wraps itself around greasy soap residue to form stubborn, icky clogs. Since I dislike using harsh (and expensive) drain cleaners, I tackle drains first with a simple kettle full of boiling water,* hoping to dissolve the hairy sludge. But when hot water doesn’t dislodge the muck, I revisit my seventh grade science project—The Erupting Volcano.
CREATIVE SOLUTION | At first it felt unnatural to hide plastic eggs instead of real ones because we didn’t grow up hunting for plastic on Easter so having our kids do so felt not only anti-Martha but like some kind of cheesy cop-out. But at some point it stopped being okay to sacrifice three dozen perfectly good hard-boiled eggs to the springtime muck in our backyard just so our kids and their friends could charge around Easter morning and ideally find them—yet never eat them.
So we have changed our tune and completely switched over to plastic, keeping the hand-decorated chicken eggs in the fridge for snacks or sandwiches. The plastic eggs have proved fantastic because we can hunt for them outdoors in all weather conditions and recycle them year after year.
Here’s how our hunt works: Read more
TRAVEL ADVISORY | When guests are coming to town and a pullout couch won’t do, Vancouver Extended Stay offers fully equipped apartments that feel like home—but better! These suites give you far greater value for your money than a traditional hotel without compromising on quality.
Located just off Robson Street and two blocks from Burrard Street, Vancouver Extended Stay is situated in the residential towers of The Residences on Georgia and The Palisades. This neighbourhood is one of the most vibrant in the city; it’s where visitors want to be. Read more
PERK ALERT | Shopping + Swapping = Shwopping. Last spring, major British retailer Marks & Spencer joined forces with Oxfam to offer their clientele a place to drop off old clothing inside M&S stores—and they coined the term “shwopping” to describe the idea of giving away a piece of used clothing whenever you buy a new one.
Approximately 500,000 tonnes of clothing winds up in landfills every year, and M&S is hoping to help reduce this amount by donating the worn clothing they receive to Oxfam so the charity can reuse, recycle or resell it.
This winter, H&M began a similar initiative, only their recycling program offers participants a monetary incentive. Here’s how it works: Read more