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The Groupon concept is simple. Buy in bulk and save.

It’s a tough thing to do as any single person or small family will tell you. Sure, those big ass bags of buns at Costco are a great deal but they’ll get freezer burned or go stale before you can chomp through them.

The Groupon model brings individual consumers together to act as a group. They approach a retailer for a deal, today in Calgary it’s The Cupcake Shoppe. The retailer offers a deal if x number of people sign up for it. Groupon tosses the deal online and the followers who want it jump in. If the minimum quota is met the group gets the coupon – groupon.

Signing up for Groupon is easy, it’s an email newsletter that will land in your box with a great deal when they’re available. Groupon Calgary has only been live for a short time, but already deals on coffee, yoga and clothing have popped up – perfect for the mobile generation they target.

Last week Groupon did a national deal with The Gap offering $50 gift cards for $25. It was a hit with groupons selling at a rate of one every 10 seconds. The commission on the day is said to have netted the company more than $5M.

This thing just might catch on.

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Geocaching is a great way to spend some time getting your kids outdoors for some exercise. It’s a walk in the woods, it’s a mystery to solve and it’s celebratory when the cache is retrieved.

There are geocaches all over Calgary. The city recognized the family fun geocaching can be with city sponsored caches around the city for the 100th anniversary of Calgary Parks.

If you’re new to geocaching, check out this simple guide. Basically you just need a simple iPhone app and you can get it done.

When my son and I started geocaching, it took us half a dozen hikes before we found our first one. If you’re a first time geocacher, I’d suggest heading out to Patterson Hill. There are 5 caches in the area and 3 of them are easy walks from the path and are dead easy to spot.

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Globalfest is back for another year at Elliston Park in Calgary. It’s a great end of summer celebration that highlights the multicultural society Canada is while ending each night with a bang of spectacular fireworks.

As with any fireworks festival in Canada, tens of thousands of people want to check out the colourful blasts each night and that can lead to traffic congestion. The communities of Red Carpet and Forest Lawn get tied up with only residents allowed in to park on the side streets. 17th Ave SE is blocked from 52nd St to 68th St and parking on the side of the road is restricted.

Wandering Globalfest at Elliston Park and checking out the exhibits and Night Market is a fun way to spend an evening, and you can get a shuttle bus from Marlborough Mall to handle your parking problems, but if you just want to watch the fireworks without buying a ticket or getting in to a traffic tie up, you just need to head about a kilometre down the road to find a great spot.

We check them out from a side road at 84th St SE and 17th Ave SE – and we’re not the only ones. About a dozen families pulled over to have a great view. Sure, you don’t hear the music, but you avoid the crowds and it’s a quick trip back to Stoney Trail to get home without muscling through traffic tie ups.

View Globalfest in a larger map

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January 1, 2008	November 27, 2008

When I did LA Weight Loss program in 2008, I dropped 25 pounds in 3 months. It was awesome. I was sponsored by LA Weight Loss for Team Diabetes to do the program, and so my wife and I didn’t have to pay. We loved it.

2 years later and we’ve both gained the weight another baby brings to the family and are looking to drop again. We really enjoyed LA Weight Loss but wanted to see if we vould do it on our own. So I started to poke around the internet to try and discover if we could do the LA Weight Loss program for free.

After having done the program once already, we knew the principles. Balance your diet. Shrink your portions. Eat 5 times a day.

Really that’s all any diet should be. Amp up your intake of fruits and vegetables to give your body good carbs and natural fibre, cut down the processed foods and sugar, and shrink that big ass steak on your plate to something more reasonable.

Here are the plans my wife and I followed when on LA Weight Loss

For Him:
2l of water, 3 protein, 4 vegetables, 3 fruits, 4 starches, 2 dairy, 2 fats
(+2 la lite bar snacks)

For Her:
2l of water, 3 protein, 3 vegetables, 2 fruits, 3 starches, 2 dairy, 2 fats
(+2 la lite bar snacks)

It’s all about portion size. 3 – 4 oz of protein is a portion, the size of a deck of playing cards.

Cheese should be the size of a pack of Wrigley’s gum. Choose < 7% milk fat options (there's a cheddar at Safeway, or Boursin cheese is AWESOME on a few low sodium Triscuits).

Choose skim milk over 2%. Buy Weight Watchers bread for thinner, smaller slices. Buy the bigger loaves and one slice is a portion, with Weight Watchers bread you can actually get a full sandwich of two slices for one portion.

Here’s one of my sample menus:

2 scrambled eggs with shredded cheese and toast with butter. Banana.
LA Lite + celery sticks
Tuna wrap with carrots, apple and latte.
LA Lite + yogurt
Grilled chicken with peas and steamed broccoli. Sliced peaches.

Simple, right?

One of the things LA Weight Loss sells it’s members on is those LA Lites you see at snack time. You NEED to buy them in order to take advantage of their money back guarantee.

Many online forums have debated the appropriate substitute for LA Lite bars, and most agree on Luna Bars. You could also use Lara Bars, Balance Bars or Zone Bars, but some of those dont balance out the calories and fat and protein that Luna does. You’re looking for a bar that’s around 150 calories and has at least 8 grams of protein.

The other thing LA Weight Loss wants you to do is a Take Off program for 2 days every two weeks. It’s basically 6oz of protein spread across 3 meals and unlimited green vegetables – plus the Take Off juice. Really it’s just a pineapple, orange, apricot blend. So simply substitute a litre of Five Alive juice that you drink throughout the day (along with your two litres of water)

Here’s a sample Take Off Menu:

8 egg whites scrambled with green peppers and green onions (that’s 1 cup of egg beaters)
LA Lite
Lettuce wraps with 1/2 can of tuna mixed with a splash of low fat italian dressing. Celery and cumbers.
LA Lite
2 oz of chicken breast stir fried with celery, broccoli, green pepper, green onion. Steam asparagus.

The best part about going through the LA Weight Loss program is that it taught my wife and I how to eat a balanced, sensible diet. Sticking to the program is not difficult and you’ll quickly realize you’re eating MORE than you were before, you’re just eating BETTER so your body sheds the pounds.

Balanced meals. Smaller portions. Lots of fruit and veg. Eat throughout the day. Drink a lot of water.

Follow those rules and toss in a couple of the substitutes mentioned above and you can rock your own LA Weight Loss program for free!

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I’ve been to a few wine pairing dinners, where food is magically matched with wine, but never one for beer.

1600 World Bier Haus (Glenmore Landing, Calgary) has monthly beer dinners and I dragged some colleagues who prefer wine and Coors Lite to come on down and check out some authentic Belgian beers.

Dave Turnbull of Horizon Wines took us on a tour of Belgian brews complete with stories of the history of the country and how it relates to the country’s 130 breweries and more than 800 beers.

Belgium has a wild history. With more than 30 regimes controlling the country over the past 1000 years, many influences have been weaved through the brewing process. When the rest of the world went straight, the Belgians went sideways, experimenting with fruit and spices in their beers.

The best beer in the world is often said to be Westvleteren since it’s only available at the Abby. You phone ahead or order online. Drive up a long road to a remote building and pull up to what is, basically, a drive thru window. You give your name and the monk gives you your one case of Westvleteren.

There are only 7 Trappist breweries in the world and 6 of them are in Belgium. The monks must make (or oversee) the brewing process and permission for the Trappist seal can only come from the Vatican.

The first beer on our menu was the Chimay Red Cap, a rich fruity beer that was paired with a bison tartare and saskatoon berries. Dave reminded us that beer should be drank a little warmer than straight from the fridge. Those “cold” beers with the mountains changing colour are made to be like that to disguise the taste of the beer. Having a beer extra cold masks the flavours and when your beer is kinda skunky, encouraging people to drink it cold masks the skunk.

Belgian beers, however, are proud of their deep richness and flavour textures. That’s why each brew has it’s own stemmed goblet, perfect for placing your hands around the bowl to warm a bit before you sip.

Drinking beer is just like drinking wine. You swirl it, smell it, sip it and swoosh it. Layer upon layer of flavour washes over your tongue.

Next on our menu was a cream of mushroom soup paired with a Triple Karmeliet.

The rich carmel tones of the beer weaved through the richness of the soup. It was great, but not my favourite pairing of the night.

Duvel (pron doo-vuhl) is the champagne of Belgian beers. The signature glass has a little “d” etched in the bottom to swirl the bubbles up through the centre. Hold it up to the light and you can see them climb like it’s a glass of bubble. It’s light and smoothed along nicely with the salmon and almond butter.

Notice the beers have gotten lighter through the meal. Dave reminded us that beer itself is a palate cleanser. With carbonated bubbles in the brew, your tongue is cleaned with each sip. Wine tastings are normally done light body to heavy, beer dinners can be mixed up however you like.

The best pairing of the night came from a St Bernardus Wit and a seared scallop. There’s just something about scallops and pairings with beer and wine that make my tastebuds dance. A nicely seared scallop and oaky chardonnay tastes like butterscotch on my tongue, the St Bernardus Wit wasnt sweet and syrupy like that tasting, but the two were engaged in a lifelong marriage in my mouth. Wow.

If you’re into the Belgians, check out Willow Park Wines & Spirits for a special Belgian beer tasting event. Chris Bauwereaerts and Bram Vaerewijck will be presenting some of their best brews on Wednesday September 8th at 7p.

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The summer of 2010 in Calgary has been crazy. Sure, we’ve had our share of sun and scorching temperatures, but every afternoon around dinner, everything changes for 30 minutes.

The wind whips up, the clouds roll in and the heavens open. Intense thunder, lightning, rain, and one of the worst hail storms in history are seemingly daily occurrences.

The only saving grace is the storms end as quickly as they start. The roll in, do business and move on. You’re rarely socked in for hours, days, or weeks at a time. Still, it can be a little frustrating to be out in the yard, on a walk, at the park, golfing, hiking, or riding to suddenly experience one of these:

And we thought it rained in Vancouver.

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When Calgarians need to escape, they go to K Country. It’s the perfect place to go for a wander with little kids, have a picnic, camp, quad, hike or ride.

There are a couple of access points to K Country. You can get in off Highway 1 just east of Canmore, or you can go due west of Calgary and hit the outdoor playground just past Bragg Creek. The roads out from Calgary to Bragg Creek are often crowded with makeshift peletons of road bikes. These long flat stretches with extra wide shoulders make it the perfect place to train for triathlons.

Head a few more kilometres west and grab a parking lot and those with knobs on their fatter tires will also find a place to get their gears on.

The options for mountain biking and hiking trails in K Country are endless. A few great sites to look for loops and trails are HikeAlberta, Kanaskis.com, Trails.com and BraggCreek.ca. There’s also an info booth at the entrance to K Country on Highway 66 where you can get maps and advice on trail choices for the day. Most of the trails emphasize the mountain part with total elevation gains and losses between 1000 and 2000 metres. You can find rides for 2 hours to full day adventures with terrain taking you through alpine meadows and high passes.

We chose the Powderface trail linked with the Prairie Creek trail. It’s a 13k loop that sends you straight up a 300m elevation gain for the first 5k before bumping you up and down for the remainder. The climax is a spectacular valley view standing atop a rocky cliff before taking the final 3k straight back down to the creek and the highway. The loop can also be done counterclockwise with a gradual climb and then steep descent, but we preferred getting the serious climb out of the way.

I call the post mountain biking hiking, since the trail is mixed use. We ran into half a dozen other cyclists and even more hikers sharing the road through the mountains. The trail guides call it a 1.5hr ride, we would say it’s more like 2 and we did it in 3. My quads cramped heavily, I didnt have the endurance to tackle the stiff climbs and my bike is a 10 year old ride with my commuter slicks on, not the nobby tires needed to conquer the rocks and mud. Despite the punishment, it was a great afternoon in the city’s sweetest playground.

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I admit it, one of my favourite things about being in radio is being treated like a very small “c” celebrity. When there are openings, celebrations or fairs, people like myself get invited to participate in some fun shenanigans.

Take the Inglewood Sunfest this past weekend for example. To help drum up support and publicity for the community streetfair, the organizers invited some people with local influence to come down for an old fashioned pie eating contest. It was a fun event they knew we would get behind and tell our audiences about, thereby spreading the word about the Inglewood Sunfest.

It’s a win-win-win. Because guess who dug through their 6 inch blueberry pie from Nectar Desserts faster than Darren Krause of Metro, Mike Morrison of Mike’s Bloggity Blog and Tony Charron from Avenue (among others)?

You know it, baby.

Unlike my last competitive food eating endeavour, this one went down without a hitch. The key was having the pie stay together. We were allowed to pop it out of the tin, and I had mine sitting like a mushroom cap so I could actually bite it from the inside, instead of digging around in the middle from the top.

Loved it! What’s next? Repelling from 30 floors up the side of the Sun Tower in the 2010 Easter Seals Drop Zone.

Yikes.

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1. Steak/Lomo
Parrillas are steakhouses in Buenos Aires, many with gauchos at the front cooking the meat on big open fires. We had a late dig in at Los Inmortales so I only ordered the “mini bif.” At it $8 seemed twice the size you’d be served for triple the price in Canada. Argentine beef is so wildly praised because they are free range and pampas fed giving it a wilder flavour.

2. Alfajore
The alfajore is the Argentinian twist on the Oreo – but much bigger. Basically it’s a butter cookie or shortbread sandwiched with dulce de leche filling.

Actually, dulce de leche itself is a treat to be tasted anywhere in latin america. It’s condensed milk sweeted into a caramel spread tate is used at breakfast the way we use peanut butter and then drizzled across every confection on the rest of the dessert menu.

3. Empanada
Empanadas are little hot pockets of goodness and make a great afternoon snack. We stopped at a cafe on Calle Florida and noshed on some for $2 each. Then, later that night for a bite we found them for $1.50. The menus we saw had them with ham and cheese, beef, vegetable, and caprese fillings. They are a great value for money and delicious little purses of flavour.

4. Malbec
Malbec is the grape du jour that is putting South American wines at the forefront of the world movement. The Norton DOC Malbec we were served at a banquet in Rio was rich and spicy and is a great tango partner for the lomo. Later, in Buenos Aires, we ordered a San Telmo Malbec that didn’t match the punch of the Norton bottle, but was still enjoyable at a mere $10 (menu price!) When we got home we picked up a Malbec from The Show. It was a little fruitier than the others and we couldnt decifer from the label if it was a wine that was made in California from imported juice or bottled in Mendoza and shipped north. Still worth a sip though!

5. Sorrentinos
The Italian influence in Argentinian cuisine is unmistakable. Pizzas and pastas dance across every menu and the most local of them is the sorrentino. A cookie shaped ravioli, the stuffings are diverse. The ones I tucked into at Spell Cafe in Puerto Madero were drowning in cheesy white sauce and snuggled next to a pile of shrimp.

6. Quilmes
Quilmes is a light blond beer found at cafes across Buenos Aires. I enjoyed ordering the 600cl bottle for just $5

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TAM Airlines, flight 703 from Buenos Aires to Rio de Janeiro.

The worst thing happened. In the lottery that is seat assignments, my wife and I pulled row 28.

There are 28 rows on this plane. Dead last. Back of the bus. The unreclining one against the wall. Usually a total pain, but on this 4 hour flight something else would be tossed into the mix. Not only would we not be able to recline, if the seats in front did, they’d be sitting on my lap.

The last row on this TAM Airlines flight was especially nasty since they’ve pinched 3 inches out of every row on the plane to squeeze an extra 6 seats in the back.

I’m barely 5’ 10” and my knees were scraping the seat in front of me. The width of the seat was just as tight with my shoulders straying into my wife’s airspace. Never mind fighting for the armrest, my actual shoulder was in her chin.

The TAM Airlines seats were so tight, that when we boarded our Continental flight from Rio to Houston, we felt like we were in first class despite schlepping in economy. 3 simple inches of knee room was all it took.

The last row is the worst on any plane, you can’t move your seat, everyone else can ride into your lap. The only seat perhaps worse than my 28A was 28C, the one on the aisle. Where everyone hovers over you waiting to use the bathroom.

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