For many Canadians, the holiday season is a time for family and friends to enjoy each other’s company, and share the thoughts and events of the year – often around a dinner table. If hosting such a meal, why not do it buffet style this year!

A buffet-style dinner is one where the food is on a different table than the one at which you sit and eat. Your guests serve themselves. Buffet is French for ‘sideboard’, which is often where the food is placed. A buffet-style meal is great for any meal; breakfast, brunch, lunch or dinner.

Having a buffet-style dinner offers many advantages over traditional dinner arrangements. Without having to allow room for bowls and platters on the dining table, you can use the space to really jazz it up for the season and let your imagination run wild. Candles – often a danger with people reaching across to serve themselves – can be boldly and beautifully arranged. Christmas greenery and decorations can spread out across the table, while not crowding out the guests. Everyone will enjoy the feast, the company and the conversation in comfort.

The key to a successful buffet is the set-up of the food table – the sideboard/buffet table. Arrangements should display your holiday dishes beautifully, yet allows guests to serve themselves easily. Place dishes in expected order of use. i.e. Don’t put the cranberry jelly at the beginning of the line. And keep the taller bowls to the back to make it easy to serve.

If space on the sideboard is an issue, when everyone is finished the main courses, clear those serving dishes away to the kitchen and bring out the desserts, coffee and tea. Or better yet, have a separate serving area for those in another room, like the den or living room. That way you don’t have to rush to clear away dirty dishes.

Here are a few other tips and suggestions for your holiday buffet;

• Buffet table set-up should start with plates at one end of the table and napkins and cutlery at the other.
• Arrange the food in the same order you would serve it at a sit-down dinner, starting with the salads, appetizers, followed by main-course dishes, then desserts.
• When possible, have food that doesn't require a knife to serve, just a fork or spoon.
• For a classy touch, roll individual sets of cutlery in napkins and tie with festive ribbon.
• For larger dinners - 20 guests and up - set up a buffet table on either side of the dinner table to avoid congestion and to speed things up.
• If space permits, set up a separate table for drinks.

December 6th marks Canada's National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women, a day for Canadians to reflect on current conditions and statistics and to take part in the process of making Canada a safer place for women.

Though we may think of Canada as being above other countries when it comes to general safety, violence and the threat of violence are an unfortunate reality for many women. There are disturbing facts that suggest much more needs to be done. From the Montréal Massacre in 1989 to the horrifying news coming from the multiple murder trial currently underway in Kingston, women in Canada are indeed at risk.

The Honourable Rona Ambrose, Minister of Public Works and Government Services and Minister for Status of Women put it well when she said, "I call on all Canadians - women and men, girls and boys - to work collaboratively to end all forms of violence against women. The involvement of men and boys in this process is unequivocally important, and I believe that by working together, we can make it happen."

"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work."
~Steve Jobs

Many Canadian homes have fireplaces that are rarely, if ever, used. The reasons for this are many; the hassle of storing wood, the pollution generated, our busy schedules, danger of burns around young children, the smell, the soot. Plus, ‘unsealed’ fireplaces – like many in older homes today, are actually a ‘negative heat source’ – exhausting more heat through the chimney than it radiates to the house.

If you do not plan to use your fireplace often during the winter, seal it up and save energy – and money. Inflatable fireplace ‘plugs’ can be bought in a variety of models and sizes. Or make one yourself. Try this solution;

Buy some 2.5 cm (1 in) rigid insulation – a half sheet should do – and cut it with a sharp utility knife to fit into the top of the firebox or flue – out of eye sight. Try to be as accurate as possible when sizing and cutting – test fit it and trim as needed - remembering that you can always trim it smaller, but not larger. ;)

Once you have one cut, use it as a pattern to make another, at the same time adjusting for an even tighter fit. When done, glue the 2 together using an interior grade building adhesive or a couple of small nuts and bolts with washers, and snug into place.

You can also seal the edges with foam weather stripping tape for an even better seal. And if a windy day causes it to fall out, erect a simple support to hold it in place.

Your energy savings will begin immediately after installing.

Ceiling fans are very popular these days, with people ‘warming up’ to their many benefits. They increase comfort by reducing drafts in winter and creating a breeze in the warm temps, lower furnace and air conditioner usage, and can really make a statement in your décor. But ceiling fans are only beneficial all year long if you if you have them blowing the right way.

More commonly linked with warm weather, many Canadians still tend to stop using their fans when cooler weather hits. But more and more people are realizing their benefit in winter and are actually purchasing them more for use in fall, winter and spring rather than in the summer.

The trick is to have the fan directing air down when it’s warm out and up when it’s cool. The downdraft in hot weather will create a cooling breeze. Reversing the flow in cool months will distribute the air – and warmth that tends to collect at the ceiling – to all levels of a room, making chilly drafts less likely.

So before it gets too cold outside, flip the switch on your ceiling fans and start enjoying their cool weather benefit.

Fan Tips
• Generally speaking, only use the lowest speed in winter to avoid creating a breeze that can feel cool and defeat the purpose of flipping the switch, unless…
• If your ceiling fan is installed in a room with a high ceiling, in addition to flipping the switch in winter, you should use the fan at medium or high speed - to help circulate that larger volume of warm air trapped at the ceiling.
• If you have a ceiling fan directly over a dining table or desk, keep it in ‘winter mode’ all year long to prevent cooling off the food. Instead, use a high speed in summer to create a less direct, but still cooling breeze.

Take five from your hectic holiday preparations and check out these festive facts from Canada and around the world. Did j’a know;

• Christmas trees are edible. Many parts of pines, spruces, and firs can be eaten. The needles are a good source of vitamin C. Pine nuts, or pine cones, are also a good source of nutrition.
• A traditional Christmas dinner in early England was the head of a pig prepared with mustard.
• Some Jewish menorahs hold 7 candles and some 9. The 7-branch one is the traditional menorah. The 9-branch menorah is used only during the holiday of Hanukkah (Chanukah).
• In the Ukraine, an artificial spider and web are often part of Christmas tree decorations because a spider web found on Christmas morning is believed to bring good luck.
• Sending red Christmas cards to anyone in Japan is considered bad etiquette, as funeral notices there are customarily printed in red.
• The twelve days of Christmas are the days between Christmas Day and Epiphany - January 6th - and represent the time it took the wise men from the East to visit Jesus after his birth.
• The biggest selling Christmas single of all time is Bing Crosby's White Christmas.
• On Christmas day in Caracas, roads are closed to traffic so Venezuelans can roller skate to the early Christmas Mass.
• The Feast of the Seven Fish, a tradition in Italy, is prepared Christmas Eve with seafood such as tuna, anchovies, sardines, dried cod, smelts, squid, octopus, shrimp and eels.
• In Syria, Christmas gifts are distributed by one of the Wise Men's camels.

Do you use hot tap water when you boil water on the stove to speed up the process? Use hot water from the tap for cereal or beverages?

You may want to rethink that!

Lead, still found in many residential water supply systems somewhere along the line, will leach into hot water more quickly than cold. So using hot water will increase your exposure unnecessarily.

Use cold water for your health.

Off with my tool belt and on with my apron!

Any other cold weather grillers out there? Here’s a tip to make your winter barbecuing even more successful;

If you are cooking a cut of meat, be sure to let it get to room temperature – not the outdoor temperature - just before cooking. This will make for a more tender and juicy meal in the end. Cooking a steak that is still cold from your fridge when it's cold outside will likely make it very tough.

“Christmas is a necessity. There has to be at least one day of the year to remind us that we're here for something else besides ourselves.” ~Eric Sevareid

“Tinsel is really snakes' mirrors.” ~Stephen Wright

“One of the nice things about Christmas is that you can make people forget the past with a present.” ~Author Unknown

“I was just thinking, if it is really religion with these nudist colonies, they sure must turn atheists in the wintertime.” ~Will Rogers