Holiday Prep with a Local Flair

Living in one province and celebrating Christmas in another offers some logistical challenges. Sure, you have to do all of your Christmas shopping a little bit earlier and buy things that will survive a plane trip in a suitcase. But when most of your presents consist of Christmas baking, you have to get creative.

A lot of the more complicated baking, such as cookies with frosting on them, have to wait until I fly back (so if you’re looking for me anytime in the three days before Christmas, check my Mom’s kitchen first). But some things I’ve been making in advance, freezing, and then crossing my fingers they don’t crumble on the way home. It has meant that this year’s stout brownies have a local flavour to them:

This year they’ve been made with Garrison’s Martello Stout, which is one of their seasonal brews. And since the recipe only calls for 1 ¼ cup beer, I had some leftovers to drink. While I normally only drink beer you can see through when you hold it up to the light, I can’t let good beer go to waste. And this stout is really good because it’s not too heavy; it’s not unlike Millstreet’s Coffee Porter.

I also made a statement with this year’s Christmas cards. I frequently complain that Canada doesn’t do enough to support its local artists, so I decided to do my bit. This year I went local and bought hand-printed cards from Inkwell Boutique. The store itself is really cute and I could have happily bought all the cards I could possibly need next year in one trip. I also coveted the paper-based Christmas ornaments, but given that all of my decorations are sitting in a storage locker back home that didn’t seem too practical. The store’s website is http://www.inkwellboutique.ca/

Buying cards made by local artists certainly wasn’t the inexpensive way to go but that’s not the point of sending cards, now is it? I got to send little pieces of art to some of the family and friends that care about.  Most of the cards I chose were made from the store’s presses:

I also picked up two from Anna Stowe, an illustrator from Dartmouth (which is just across the harbour from Halifax):

So I hope you all find a way to shop local for the holiday season.

Proper Snows

When I woke up this morning, there was no snow on the ground but that did not last very long. Today, Halifax received its first proper snow fall of the season. By four in the afternoon, my neighbourhood looked like this:

The plow had some issues, as you may be able to tell, due to all the parked cars on the street.

The tiny specks in the middle of the road are a mom trying ever so hard to keep her toddler (dressed in a green one-piece snow suit) walking in a forward direction. He seemed rather interested in playing in the small piles of snow in the road instead.

As I write this just after 8 pm, the snow had ended and we're being treated to a lovely mixture of rain and ice pellets, so my walk to the bus stop tomorrow should be very slushy. Eww.

Urban Art

This post is an example of how blogging alters how I explore a new city- I see something interesting from the bus and then I have to figure out how to find it again so I can share them with you. When I first got here I noticed that most of the utility boxes in Halifax are not industrial green or brown in colour. In an attempt to prevent graffiti tags on the boxes, the city instead allowed local artists to paint them and turned them into little pieces of art. You may have noticed one set in the photo I posted of the Nova Scotia Archives (if not, look back at the 26 October entry). Some of them I encountered while out walking, such as this one:

It’s on Robie St. behind the one of the hospitals downtown. I pass it on Saturdays on my walk from the bus stop to Starbucks (I work on Saturdays and the whole experience a bit more civilized by starting my day with knitting and a cup of tea). This is both sides of a box located in Bayer’s Lake, out on the edge of town, near the Home Depot:

But all of my favourites seem to be utility boxes that I see on the bus. This required some planning and an epic Sunday walk a couple of weeks ago to get photos of them. These two boxes are located a few blocks from each other on Joseph Howe Dr and are inspired by Monet paintings:

There is a house behind that second one that has tall, tacky cement columns on it, but in order for me to get those in the shot as well I would have had to stand out in the road with oncoming traffic. So you’ll just have to take my word for it.

My favourite, however, is this abstract design located at the intersection of Quinpool Rd. and Connaught Ave. I usually pass it on my bus ride downtown.

Lovely.

Farmer's Market

Last Saturday I took the opportunity of a day off to go to the Halifax Market. It’s open most days but on Saturday there are the most vendors selling yummy food, handcrafted things, and local produce. It’s located in this building by the harbour (which is how I ended up looking at the seagulls that I posted yesterday).

I had a lovely wrap for lunch (which was too delicious to stop eating and take a photo of) and was full enough to resist all the yummy baked goods I kept seeing. I did buy some yarn from the Lismore Sheep Farm located in River John, NS. Good thing the stall from the alpaca farm was only selling knitting things and no yarn because I would have easily have bought the equivalent of a few animals without trying. I also did some Christmas shopping. However, the most interesting thing I saw (and bought) was this:

Hand-carved oak buttons! How great are they? Now I just need to knit a sweater so I have something to sew them onto. And since all this talk of yarn is going to have my Dad freaking out (since my yarn stash currently lives at my parent’s house)... look, a brewery!

Garrison Brewery is located in the Farmer’s Market complex. They make a variety of beers year-round along with some seasonal favourites. They just released their Winter Warmer Strong Ale.

I enjoyed it, even though it’s not the kind of beer I typically drink. It has some seasonal spices in it but the taste is balanced, so they don’t overwhelm the beer. And they were selling nice openers too, so I just had to buy one. I look forward to sampling something else from Garrison soon.

Flurries

While I was on the bus to work this morning, something happened with the weather:

Still can't see it? All you had to do was stick out your hand and then it was hard to miss the big, fluffy white stuff.

Yep, there were snowflakes this morning. Which I know isn't a big deal to the average Canadian but remember that I spent most of last winter in London where it typically does not snow. Literally, this is the second time in 2011 that I have seen fluffy snowflakes. The flakes only lasted for an hour and none of it stuck, but still, it's a sign that winter is starting to creep up.

And don't worry- by March I'll be sick of the sight of snow like everyone else. But leave me to my childish delight for the time being.

Pretty By The Water

So I was rather pleased with myself that I 'caught up' on my blog posts during my long weekend, forgetting that three days off meant that I would do things that would require more blogging! So, big surprise, I am playing catch-up again. Here's a post of mainly photos to make it appear that I am sort-of up to date (even if I'm not).

I was walking down by the harbour (for reasons that I will post about later) and saw a huge flock of seagulls playing. They looked pretty against the lovely blue water, so I took some pictures.

I have come to the conclusion that I like seagulls much more in their natural habitat, being in or near water, than the ones I see back home. And by that I mean birds really much nicer when they're not in garbage cans, eating squashed lunches dropped in school yards, or picking at roadkill which are generally activities that I associate with seagulls.

On that lovely mental picture, here's some photos of the Northwest Arm that I took on a walk Sunday.

I was really enjoying taking snaps of this group of ducks, except for one small thing...

The duck on the right insisted on cleaning his tailfeathers every time I took a photo, then stopped doing it when I put the camera back in my purse... and then started the second I took it back out again. Bah!

The Miracle of Getting a Flu Shot

You may think that the title is a bit snarky on my part, but it really is something like a miracle to get a flu shot in Halifax. This is one area that Ontario seriously has it right- there may be hundreds of things wrong in my home province, but the distribution of flu shots is not one of them.

In Ontario, you can get a flu shot either from your doctor’s office or at one of the many flu clinics in your area. All you have to do is look at the schedule and find the day and time when your local school/mall/community centre is hosting a clinic. And there are lots of days to choose from and the time windows are fairly lengthy and convenient.

I was naive enough to assume this practice was the same all across the country. That was clearly silly of me.

In Nova Scotia, you go to your doctor’s office to get a flu shot or go to the clinic at your workplace. Now, what do you do if you don’t have a doctor and your employer is not holding a clinic, like me? Well, you go on this website, which is clear as mud:

http://www.gov.ns.ca/hpp/cdpc/influenza.asp

In my case, on the map I can click on the links to either ‘Capital Health’ or ‘IWK Health Centre’. Capital Health has a flu page, but it doesn’t really tell you where to get a flu shot. You just click on links that send you round in circles. And IWK Health Centre’s page has no information about flu shots and if you search ‘flu shot 2011’ on their website, the only thing you will find out is what the schedule was in 2009. Very helpful.

Then I contemplated waiting to get my flu shot until I was back in Ontario but then I kept seeing people cough into their hands and then touch the poles on every bus trip I made that week, so that option was clearly out. I had the flu in 4^th year university and I didn’t want to go through that again if I could help it.

So and this point I became rather frustrated. So I ignored all of the government websites and just typed ‘flu shot Halifax’ into Google. You will find one useful link, to the website of a chain of walk-in clinics. They have one location in downtown Halifax. Great! This is their schedule for the flu clinic at that location (I was looking this information up the last week of October):

Wednesday Oct. 26- 5:30-9:00pm

Saturday Nov. 5- 9am- 12pm

Tuesday Nov. 8- 1-4pm

That’s it. I had missed the Wednesday clinic and the two other time slots are during my regular work hours. Fortunately, I was able to start work late on the Saturday, so I got my flu shot then. The government stats say that 38% of the province’s population got their flu shot last year. I’m surprised the numbers are that high, given the hoops you have to jump through. But I got one in the end, so that's all that matters.