walk by the lake

Happy New Year!

One of my New Year's resolutions was to take more walks. I work at home and often forget to take walks, or if it's cold, I just become a hermit. The other day at lunch I took my camera for my walk in and around the Lake. Here are some shots:







Have any of your own shots? I created a "By the Lake" group on Flickr. Join the group and upload your lake shots!

Vital Planet

One of the things I was missing in my new 'hood were the organic and natural things I buy like hand soap, dish detergent, cereal, oatmeal -- that kind of stuff. I didn't really know where to go for that stuff without trekking back up to The Danforth to Grassroots and The Big Carrot.

I was happy to find The Village Butcher as I mentioned in a previous post but how excited was I to find Vital Planet only a 10 minute walk from my house. I had to drive to the other place in my old 'hood.

Vital Planet on the Lakeshore is one of three shops in the city I just found out from its Website and they are all family-owned.

According to the site: Vital Planet believes in this holistic approach and carries a large selection of quality products. You will never find the staff pushing a particular product line or a company. Some of the products carried include: natural and organic foods and dairy products, vitamins and supplements, as well as homeopathic and herbal remedies. Aromatherapy and natural body products, books, cleaning products, natural candles, bulk herbs, food, teas, organic fair trade coffee, sports nutrition and even pet food can be found.

One of the cool things about this shop is that they sell milk, yogurt ice cream and cheese among other things. And the milk comes in glass bottles. How cool is that? It reminds me of my days growing up on a dairy farm when we used to take apple juice bottles to the barn and get milk straight from the cows (ok it was in the big silver tub thingy but still). The only difference now is that I buy skim milk - the milk from the farm was whole milk that we had to shake to get rid of the milk separation.

Vital Planet doesn't have everything I like, but it has most. It even has my face cream which is pretty cool. I love one stop shops for all the goodies on my list.

Greek Paradise: A Taste of Kalamata

(pic source)

These past few weeks have been full of construction and nasty paint fumes in our 'new' house and as a result, we haven't been in any sort of an eating schedule. I can't say we haven't been eating well, because it has all been delicious, but we've been seriously lacking in the home-cooked-meal department.

On day nth of eating out, M and I wanted to have something a little healthier: I had a craving for a big salad and grilled chicken. Eating at home wasn't really an option because of the paint fumes (no low-VOC here unfortunately... arg.) so we decided to check out a local greek place M's cousin told us about on the weekend.

There's no need to venture up to The Danforth for good Greek. Kalamata is located along the Lakeshore just past Kipling in Long Branch (one of the last neighbourhoods east of Mississauga for all you downtown folks) and what a find. Home to a former Fox and Firkin (Fiddle??), Kalamata offers delicious home cooked Greek cuisine with all the fixings. The room itself is on the large side, but was quite cozy nonetheless because of the warm and welcoming fireplace, low lighting and comfortable furnishings (not to mention the various bouts of Saganaki being flambéed at tables around the room). Large banquet-style seating is offered in some areas in place of chairs, while patrons can also opt to sit in a cozy corner booth.

For dinner, M and I opted for appeys: we each started off with a Greek Salad ($7) which was fresh and tasty and had the perfect amount of mouth-watering feta, olives and splash of lemon. Olive tapenade ($4) came next, which was pure olive heaven (that's if you like olives -- not for you Mom); followed by an order of grilled chicken Souvlaki Skewers ($4 for two), and Zucchini & Eggplant ($8), seasoned and lightly pan fried served with a side of skorthalia (a fresh garlic, whipped potato and extra virgin olive oil combo - delish!)

We only had water to drink, but there is a pretty extensive wine and cocktail list available.

According to the cuz, Kalamata offers a yummy brunch on the weekends. I'll be trying that out for sure in the next few weeks.

The best part of the night though was the owner. Unfortunately, I didn't catch her name but she was super friendly, down-to-earth and chatted with us about the restaurant and the area for quite some time. I can't wait to go back!