Winnipeg has a sweet candy history. Clodhoppers might be the most famous example but I don’t want to dwell too much on the past because there’s a new candy kid…
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Iâve always felt humour can be very helpful in getting through lifeâs toughest challenges. But never before has a smile or chuckle been so difficult. Still, I think itâs important to at least try and laughologist Albert Nerenberg agrees. He says thereâs a very interesting and specific reason why the pandemic makes us cranky. The human brain has a design flaw, it holds on to bad things. Weâre just not good at letting stuff go. Itâs a defence mechanism that goes way back to when we lived in caves. Nerenberg says going for a walk or drive once in a while is a great way to take our mind off all the COVID-19 BS. I guess thatâs why I always feel better after I hop in my truck and hit a Starbucks drive-thru for a latte. Idle chit chat with a friend on the phone is also distracting. And the best cure of them all is laughter. Thanks for explaining the science behind this Albert!
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I celebrated my birthday this week with some of the finest food Winnipeg has to offer. My wife Jackie and I began celebrating on Sunday night. We ordered some of our favourite dishes from Vientiane Restaurant on Marion (their spring rolls are the best!) which I brought home so we could watch the Oscars. We were apparently the only ones watching. Jackie had already picked up a Banana Split cake from Chocolate Zen on South Osborne so we enjoyed a piece of that too. Then on Monday, my actual birthday, my friend Jim Willox delivered lunch for meâ¦maybe one of the best beef satay soups Iâve ever had from Ha Long Bay Restaurant on Notre Dame. And as if all that wasnât enough, Phil Klein at Bagelsmith on Carlton heard it was my birthday and he dropped off a smoked meat bagel sandwich and some bagels and schmears. I ate well all week! What a great birthdayâ¦
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Have you noticed how the price of just about everything at the grocery store is going up? The arrival of new discount grocery stores in Winnipeg is helping keep prices a bit lower but as expected, weâre paying significantly more to put food on the table. Back in December, Dalhousie Universityâs Sylvain Charlebois predicted this would happen. Groceries will cost up to 5% more this year which works out to about $700 for the average family. The man they call the Food Professor says agricultural commodities have really jumped in price. Corn is up 84% and soy is more than 70% higher. We consumers donât really care about that but food processors do and eventually we pay for it through the things we eat. Dr. Charlebois says Asia is driving these commodity prices through the roof by buying up everything possible. Here are some things I put in my Halâs Kitchen food column just a couple weeks ago that could lower your grocery billâ¦
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A year ago, as frozen pizza sales were soaring early in the pandemic, I called down to Winkler to talk to the makers of my favourite local frozen pizza to see if their sales were spiking too. Just since then, in only one year, Spenst Brothers has gone from being sold in 170 stores to now being available in 240 locations, including some restaurants. As I told Connie Spenst on my radio show this week, itâs a real Manitoba success story. As she says, âthe pizzaâs where itâs atâ but Connie and I are working on getting some of their meat on my barbeque this summer so I can talk a bit more about that part of their business. After all, thatâs where it all began. Spenst Brothers got started 20 years ago during the BSE or Mad Cow crisis. The Spenst family wasnât sure what to do with the beef being produced on their farm so they opened up a meat store and then started selling pizza too. Your favourite grocery store likely carries Spenst Broth