I took the plunge

The neatly stapled hand out was passed around. The pressure was on. I gripped my seat, leaned over my keyboard, peered down at the alphabetical buttons glaring up at me. It was like I was deciding to jump off a cliff. Would I click enter and take the plunge?

I had to. And so I clicked.

It’s official –I am now a Tweeter. Shudder.

I don’t know why I’m so reluctant to join these sites, but for some reason they freak me out. I felt the same way about joining Facebook and (cringe) MySpace, although I no longer use the latter, and in fact I didn’t even sign up for either one of them myself. A friend did it for me, forcing me to submerge myself into our modern world where people are pressured to publicly open themselves up to a world of strangers.

I later felt the same way when I was instructed to start a blog…and now it’s Twitter.

But now that I have all of them, is it really so bad?

Not really. Just time consuming and problematic when you have a journalism assignment due the next day at 8:00 a.m. and all you can think about is a new blog idea or who may have just sent you a Facebook message and now I’ll be thinking what’s going down in the world of Tweets. They’re actually all exciting resources and fun ways to get to know others and shout out your own opinions. Not to mention they’re extremely critical resources for future communicators like myself because you get to show off what you can do.

So ultimately I am excited to have been instructed to join Twitter. Just like I was secretly excited a friend had created a Facebook page for me. And just like I was secretly excited I would have to create a blog.

So if I enjoy blogging and Facebook messaging and tweeting then why am I so reluctant to admit that I enjoy doing these things? Why is it that I sometimes hate our world of instant messaging? Why do I cringe at the very thought? I have nothing to lose, right?

Salt! Salt! Salt!

Recently I went to Boston Pizza for diner before attending the Manitoba Moose’s Skills Competition. It was tasty –your typical greasy-yet-so-delicious pizza accompanied with a crisp and refreshing glass of chardonnay. However, I noticed how salty the food was.

And yes you’re probably thinking: what’s with this crazy girl always harping on salt in restaurant food in her blogs. But, honestly, the weird obsession started after I read that Globe and Mail article this past summer on how Canadian’s (and American’s) consume far to much sodium.


(http://www.theglobeandmail.com/special-reports/hard-to-shake/)

So I decided to do my own investigation on how much sodium Canadians are consuming and on how much sodium is in Boston Pizza’s menu items. The results are shocking!

Persons aged 9-50 years-old are supposed to get 1,500 mg of sodium/day. However, a Statistics Canada study from 2004 reveals males consume more sodium than females and they get an average of 4,000 mg/day! (The study did not specify how much sodium females take in.)

That’s practically double the amount! (If I got the math wrong, bear with me I’m a CreComm student.)

According to Statistics Canada, too much sodium in a person’s diet leads to hypertension (also known as high blood pressure). Hypertension causes strokes, heart attacks, heart failure, arterial aneurysms, and chronic renal failure.

The problem I figure: eating out, especially if you’re eating at Boston Pizza.

After digging through Boston Pizza’s online nutritional guide (which is nice of them to have), I quickly discovered just how unhealthy its menu is. For example, a starter size Caesar salad has 370 mg of sodium (the regular size if 740 mg). A starter size of breaded chicken wings –1,510 mg, so considering just about everything contains sodium, I guess that’s your meal for the day. One slice of their famous spicy perogie pizza contains 360 mg of sodium. And if you want dessert too –that’ll cost you another 300 mg of sodium.

So let’s say you start with a Caesar salad, have three pieces of pizza and dessert. That amounts to 1,750 mg of sodium –in one meal!

The most shocking menu item in terms of the amount of sodium it has is the jambalaya fettuccini. Its ingredients include a pomodoro sauce, vegetables, chicken, shrimp, and Italian sausage and has 3,460 mg of sodium. Now that’s crazy. On average, however, the pasta’s contained roughly 2,000 mg of sodium/dish.

Now, I should clarify before things get too far, I’m not trying to fear monger, rather I want to raise awareness on the issue. I think many of us worry more about the amount of calories or sugar an item contains than the amount of salt. Why would we, it seems harmless. That’s what I thought too, until I read the Globe and Mail feature.

So I just want people to think about it. I think it’s fair to say that when eating at home salt intake isn’t a large issue because you’re conscious of how much you’re actually putting into your food (unless of course you eat a lot of pre-packaged foods or foods with preservatives). But when eating out we don’t really think about it. And many people dine out a lot. And yes, buying your lunch from the snack kiosk counts.

I’m also not trying to detour you from going to Boston Pizza. I chose the place as a guinea pig for my blog simply because I was there the other day and I noticed the saltiness. I too love going out for some unhealthy grub every once in a while. And I certainly can’t resist a few slices of BP’s perogie pizza. But I’m also very conscious of the fact that I’m eating unhealthy food.

Do you think about it? If you don’t, try being more aware. Reflect on your recent food choices. Were they prepared at home? From scratch? Could you be making some changes to your diet? Should you be worried? How can you begin making those changes?

Now take action.

My advice: buy a cook book that focuses on low sodium intake. Eat fewer pre-packaged foods and foods without preservatives. And/or bring your own lunch to work or school. But at the same time, break the rules. Indulge every once in a while. Just be aware!

Just say hello!

(Photo found on winninglovehate.com by Bryan Scott)

I was sitting inside the Princess Street Grill observing my environment as I waited on a friend to meet me for lunch. The diner wasn't clean. It smelled like old grease. My table wobbled. The menu's were greasy and crinkled. And yet I was comfortable. I felt safe and welcomed.

Perhaps it was because everyone around me was happy. The restaurant was filled with young families and a few business crews who were out for lunch. Everyone was laughing.

As people walked into the restaurant the busy servers would turn around and cheerfully shout from whichever table they were taking an order from at the time: Hello! Now I know what you're thinking: Hello? Who cares.

It's a big deal.

How many upscale restaurants have you gone to where you are paying large sums of money for quality food and service and upon your entrance, you stand and wait at the door because the sign says 'Please Wait to be Seated' and there's not a host in sight? And in those moments I can always feel the hatred from the busy servers as they glare at me over their shoulder while running yet another tray of dishes to the kitchen. To me the glare always suggested a cold: "I know". Why not just say hello?

One word, that's all it takes and instantly the customer feels welcomed.

So as I sat there thinking and obersving, I realized how often the friendliest service at restaurants comes from the laid back ones, not the upscale. You know the ones who have servers that are being paid large amounts of tip money for their 'friendly service'.

Just breathe in and breathe out

I would just like to warn everyone that my blog may seem a little spastic over the next little while as I am on a mission to fix one problem: getting my blog to update when I make new posts. RSS feed, why won't you send?

Unfortunately I have been trying to fix this problem for a while and have not been remotely successful. My patience has run out.

If anyone knows a quick fix, I would love to hear it!

Until then, I think the photo below captures my mood well.

Photo: courtesy of Kenton Larsen

What's 10 cents?

Question: do you think that 10 cents is enough of an incentive to get you to bring a reusable mug when buying your morning coffee?

I know ten cents doesn’t make a difference to me, and after speaking to a few friends they agreed with me as well.

Coffee shops like Starbucks, Second Cup, and Tim Hortons offer their customers 10 cents off if they bring in a reusable mug. This is one of their ways of reducing environmental waste. Now don’t get me wrong, I think that it’s great that companies care about the environment so much that they want to reward customers for also being mindful.

However, think about how many people do go the extra mile to be environmentally conscious. Ok there are many, but it seems there are many more who aren’t acting on their environmental concerns.

Hands down I am one of those people who couldn’t be bothered in the morning to make my own coffee, I would much rather spend the few bucks and have someone do it for me. I would also rather someone hand me a clean cup with my beverage, one that I don’t have to wash later.

I know it’s pathetic, but I think it’s safe to say that I’m not alone. As a woman of convenience, whether I like to admit it or not, a 10 cent rebate is small potatoes. I am already paying for the convenience when brewing a pot of coffee takes just as long as standing in the morning line up at Tim Hortons, so I obviously don’t care about spending a few bucks everyday on a hot cup of java nor do I wish to lug around a coffee mug all day and have to wash it later –although I do.

I don’t carry around a reusable mug because I am getting a discount; I carry it around because I too care about reducing waste, which not everyone does.

So my question to coffee companies like Starbucks, Second Cup, and Tim Hortons is: if the incentive was greater do you think you could get more people on the reusable mug bandwagon? Ten cents seems like a penny when you are paying for a four dollar latte and it also seems like you guys wouldn’t be losing much money with this incentive, so would it be feasible to increase the discount?

Or am I just being a cheap and ungrateful customer?

What I've learnt about blogging so far

I confess: I want to become a communications expert of some type, however, before entering Creative Communications at Red River College, the thought of creating a blog seemed useless.

How I’ve learnt since then.

Blogging brings your thoughts to life and shows off your writing skills. I know, it sounds intimidating, what writing skills? But the more you write, the better you get. I find that posting blogs pressures me to think more critically about the way I am writing and to make sure everything is grammatically correct. Think of it as a school assignment where teachers will be grading you work, except that that is only one persons opinion, now you have an audience.

Having an audience then makes me think about entertaining people. Why should people be reading my whole article? Why should they even care about what I am writing? And one of the most important questions I ask myself is what my point is?

Towards the beginning of my classes’ blogging career, a group of well known bloggers came and told us to never write if we didn’t actually have something to say. I found this the best blogging advice I have ever received. It is also the most obvious advice, yet is still something I always need to remind myself.

I feel at this point my blog is still struggling slightly with this and it is something I am trying to solve. For example at the beginning I made a post on a potential dance choreography based on a scene in which a group of servers have a temper tantrum on customers. Why would anyone have cared about my vision? That was a post likely better suited for a journal at home.

So another thing I have learnt is to try and inform people in some way. Make them want to care about what you are writing. Don’t just write because it interests you.
By interesting and helping others you establish an audience –one that hopefully gets hooked on your blog. The bigger your audiences, the more people you have to spread the message that your blog is great, then more people become readers and then the circle repeats.

Who knows maybe an avid reader of your blog will become a future employer of yours. I know I am beginning to wish more and more that my blog may open up the possibility for me to become a restaurant reviewer or PR personnel for a restaurant. I am beginning to see the point of having a blog, which is that it serves as a creative display of your work. It gets your name out there. It hones your skills. And hopefully, it will open up job opportunities for you.

So although my blog may not be perfect yet, I am beginning to have big dreams for it. My plan from here on is to establish a clearer focus and to stick to it. To both entertain and inform. To discover my own style of writing, for example, am I a serious writer? Humorous? Academic? Colloquial? And ultimately, I want to reach a point where I know my blog is successful and why it is successful. At this point that focus is blurred but developing.

Fake it 'til you make it

I was pretty excited Tuesday night because I was finally going to eat at Sabai Thai Eatery, a restaurant I had been interested in checking out since it opened about a year ago. I'm a huge fan of experimenting with new restaurants and although Winnipeg has a lot of restaurants I take the bus, so my dining parameters are on the smaller side. Sabai is on Corydon Ave., a short walk from my house, so I had pretty big expectations for the place as I was hoping for a new favourite restaurant that would be close to home. However, while the food was good, I couldn't help but notice that it shows Sabai is a new restaurant. In this blog my aim is to provide readers with a review of the restaurant and to offer tips on how to inexpensively better your new restaurant.

Overall Sabai's food and service is quite good. The menu is very affordable with items averaging nine to ten dollars apiece. One of the best parts about Sabai’s cheaper menu is that the mark-up on wine is not high at all. A bottle of wine there averages between $20-30, always a bonus.

Also, the food was nicely presented on the plate; for example one of the dishes we ordered was the Chiang Mai noodles which is a yellow curry noodle dish, it looked like a volcano. The noodles were twirled in the bowl so that there was a peak at the top and then it had bean sprouts shooting out of the peak with long crunchy noodles lying horizontally across the bowl as if they were chopsticks. It was fun and classy but my mouth was still watering.

The décor of the restaurant; however, is still noticeably in the works –when you go to the washroom anyway. The washroom is stuffed with cleaning products and yet it still doesn't look clean. For example, the white tiles’ grout appears to be molding or is at least very old. However, out in the main part of the restaurant it looks quite polished. Sabai has a nice deep red, green, and brown colour scheme. The lights are dimly lit creating a relaxed atmosphere. The music is not too loud and sounds quite natural. It has nice large booth seats that are soft and comfortable making you want to stay longer and enjoy. And finally, the tables are nice and far apart so you can have private conversations without having to worry about what your neighbor’s next to you think about your nasty divorce.

Nevertheless, Sabair has some obvious flaws. My suspicions led me to believe that most of the flaws are simply to due to how expensive it is to get a business up and running when you still have a pretty small fan base. Therefore I will take some time to offer my advice (I feel I have some credentials since I grew up creating and running a restaurant with my parents) on how a new establishment can fake their lack of funds in order to seem as though they’ve put millions of dollars into their establishment.

One of the first dead give aways that your restaurant is on a budget is the amount of salt that goes into your food. Salt may be an easy and affordable way to add flavor into your food, but people are able to tell. Salt is almost acidic and spicy on the tip of your tongue if there is too much and often there is so much salt that the food becomes over flavored. Avoid resorting to over salting. The case was especially noticeable at Sabai. My assumption is that they struggle with keeping flavor in their food because they are using specialty ingredients. If you’re using specialty ingredients try and cut your expenses somewhere else. Don’t sacrifice your food, buy the top quality ingredients. After all, people are coming to your restaurant for good food. Period.

(Note: The Globe and Mail featured a series of salt reports this summer on how much salt we actually consume. The amount consumed in one dish at a restaurant is appalling. But instead of just reporting the shocking facts of our over-consumption of salt, they showed examples of what some restaurants do to avoid adding salt to their food. I felt their advice was especially helpful and would recommend you check out the link to the article. http://www.theglobeandmail.com/special-reports/hard-to-shake/dont-pass-the-salt/article1194031/

Second, people eat with their eyes before they eat with their mouths. Put some effort into your presentation. Food presentation is inexpensive so be creative with the arrangement of your food.

Third, relaxing décor is critical. People don’t want to come back to a restaurant if it is crowded, uncomfortable, or dirty. Unfortunately, however, nice décor is one of the most expensive things to establish. So it may not always be possible to finish decorating completely before you open. Therefore I suggest doing the following: invest in comfortable dining chairs, don’t cram too many tables into the room, and invest in paint and plants. Fresh paint feels clean and new. And plants breathe life into the place.

Fourth, your staff’s knowledge,servers especially, is important. The servers are the face of the company to the guests, so they need to be experts on the menu. They need to have tried most of the dishes. Remember, your business is new so word of mouth has not spread around yet as to what is good at your restaurant. The server needs to be able to offer advice. At Sabai the server couldn't tell me which dish, out of the two I had questioned, to recommend. I was debating between a Pad Thai and the Chiang Mai Noodles, two different dishes as one was curry and the other not, the only advice the server gave was that they were two totally different dishes so she wasn’t sure which one to recommend. Well no kidding they are different hunny, why would your chef put two of the same dishes on the menu? The correct way to approach my question would have been to more thoroughly describe how each dish tastes, after all taste is what I was ultimately debating about. Her approach, unfortunately made it seem as though she had never tried either dish even though she insisted she had.

Also, if you are going to have wine on your menu, be sure your servers know how to present it properly! Wine presentation is one of the easiest ways to make your restaurant appear classy. A classy restaurant brings in classy guests which in turn creates a classy reputation. Here is a link to a site that offers great wine serving tips. http://www.thatsthespirit.com/en/wine/howto_serve.asp.

So there you have it, some advice on how to better your restaurant on a budget. I hope this will help anyone who is in such a situation. And in terms of my final impressions of Sabai Thai Eatery: I would go back. I could tell the effort was there, some areas just need some tweaking. And like I said, despite the mild saltiness of the food, it was pretty great Thai food. The service was friendly. And it was a very comfortable environment to sit in. I would not give it three out of five stars.