Home, Furniture & Kitchen

Where I grew up, we didn’t have ‘food trends.’ Everything we ate was simple, basic, and comfortable – from roast beef and mashed potatoes to chili and mashed potatoes. If we were going to spice things up, maybe we’d have spaghetti or pizza.   So imagine my surprise when the person who did all of the cooking during my formative years, the woman who actually served me lasagna and mashed potatoes (I’m not joking), called me up and started talking to me about quinoa. And she wasn’t just calling for a definition of what quinoa is either – she was talking about her long list of personal quinoa salad recipes. I almost dropped the phone in shock. After all, quinoa doesn’t include ground beef or mashed potatoes in the ingredient list, so this was quite a detour.

Pasta salad – it’s just one of those things that fits in with everything. Summer BBQ in the backyard? Pasta salad goes great with steak, chicken, or veggie burgers. Having a formal dinner for friends? Pasta salad can fit right in with some of the main courses you toil for hours over.  At my house it’s practically expected that I make a side pasta salad for a roast chicken, and I always whip it out for the official Canadian kick off for summer on July 1st.

Working from home is an increasingly popular trend. Doing so saves on office space, commute time and many of the expenses of having a team working in a centralized building. It can also be an attractive option for employees. I worked from home on a part-time basis for a decade and switched to full-time over five years ago —I can’t even picture going back to a traditional office. But if you’re going to make this work, you have to take it seriously (it’s not all coffee on the deck and hanging out with the dogs) and your PC is a central component. I’ve put together suggestions on how to set up your PC to work from home.

In the past year the wearable tech market has really exploded. From Bluetooth rings to Smart Eyelashes we’ve seen them all, but there’s nowhere it’s been more dominant than in the fitness category. To improve your heath and keep yourself accountable, you just can’t go wrong with a fitness band, and the latest band out of Garmin will track to improve your sleep and monitor your heart during fitness activities too.   Garmin has entered the fitness ring with the Garmin vivofit, available now at Best Buy.