Stacey McKelvey from Metropolitan Market discusses winter plants to brighten your home, garden, and life during the cloudy winter months.

But with the makeover of Uptown's Metropolitan Market, I just may have found a new favorite. I popped in this morning to get a sandwich for lunch and found myself wandering the aisles so long that I was dangerously close to being late for work. It is just beautiful, with loads of local vendors and a great new 'wellness' area devoted to herbal remedies, vitamins, and body care. And from January 20th through February 16th, there are loads of amazing events going on, including four nights where guest chefs like Tom Douglas and Armandino Batali will prepare culinary treats to sample.

As I checked out, I stuffed an entry slip into a box for a chance to win one of about 25 incredible gifts baskets, some of which included free coffee for a year, a catered Easter dinner, goodies from Macrina Bakery, and a night where a real CHEF comes to your HOUSE to make dinner. Wouldn't that be lover-ly?

For more information the events going on at the Uptown Metropolitan Market, located at 100 Mercer Street, click here.

Best Place to Buy A Gift For Any One, At Any Time

From the outside it looks like a chi-chi grocery store, and when you walk in, your impression might be that it is one.  In point of fact, Metropolitan Market is simply the best place to buy a present for any person on any occasion.  Whether you’ve forgotten a buddy’s birthday and buy him a high-quality 22-ounce beer, or whether your Great Aunt Tilly the chef would appreciate some silicone cooking implements, you’ll find something that fits every person — and walk out with a card to match.

Now that you're done orchestrating a belt-loosening, applause-inducing Thanksgiving dinner for a houseful of guests, get ready to do it again in a mere three weeks.

Or not.

You could join those who have discovered the ease of ready-to-heat-and-eat holiday meals prepared by a local grocery store. Practically every major grocery chain and many independent markets sell holiday meals featuring fully cooked roasted turkey, glazed ham or prime rib along with side dishes for one flat price.

Bayview Thriftway in Olympia has been offering complete turkey meals during the holidays since at least the 1980s, said Kevin Storman, one of the owners of Storman Inc, which operates Bayview Thriftway. Albertsons has sold holiday meals for more than 15 years. Top Food & Drug started offering the holiday packages three years ago to answer customer demand and stay competitive, Cheryl-Ann Jones, the chain’s director of food service, wrote in an e-mail to The News Tribune.

“People are just more time-starved,” Storman said. “People like spending more time with their family in activities, and not being tied to the kitchen for hours and hours.”

Entrees and sides come cooked and refrigerated. All customers have to do is warm them up.

Besides saving time, say Storman and other grocery executives, pre-cooked holiday meals have improved to the point that they taste homemade.

“With our meals, all of the sides are made from scratch and are not the typical frozen side dishes,” wrote Top Foods’ Jones. “People are really shocked by the amount of food – (the turkey dinner) is really a good value at $59.99.”

Prices vary depending on the size of the spread and the type of ingredients. Dinners tend to cost more from upscale grocers such as Bayview, Stadium Thriftway in Tacoma’s Stadium District and Metropolitan Market in Tacoma’s Proctor District.

For instance, the Metropolitan Market’s holiday meals allow customers to choose four out of six side dishes made from scratch, including its popular green beans and carrots with garlic sauce, said Paige Lamb, Metropolitan’s food service director. The centerpiece of its $99.99 turkey dinner is the oven-roasted, all-natural, free-range Diestel brand turkeys.

“It’s a true, turkey roasted flavor. It has ... no hormones, no antibiotics, no MSG,” she said. “It’s all around a better bird quality-wise and health-wise.”

The dinner has proved so popular that by a week before Thanksgiving, Metropolitan stores in Tacoma, Federal Way and Seattle had already sold more of the holiday meals than during all of last year’s Thanksgiving and Christmas holiday season, she said.

“We’re like, what’s going on? There’s supposed to be a recession,” Paige said. “We’ve had an overwhelming response.”

Lamb thinks it’s due to the Diestel turkey, the array of side dishes and the package price. Though the Diestels cost more than last year’s variety, Metropolitan kept its turkey dinner price the same as last year in light of the tough economy, she said. Two Seattle-area competitors offer Diestel turkey meals for $129.

Metropolitan Market in Tacoma and Federal Way Offers three holiday dinners. Each serves 6 to 8, plus leftovers.

• 10- to 12-pound natural Diestel turkey, 14 ounces cranberry sauce, pumpkin pie, 16 rolls, 28 ounces old fashioned turkey gravy, four side dishes, $99.99.

• 8-pound Kurobuta ham, 16 rolls, pumpkin pie, four side dishes, $119.99.

• 4-pound natural Snake River Farms prime rib, 1 pint au jus, 1 pint horseradish sauce, 16 rolls, pumpkin pie, four side dishes, $159.99.

Customers choose four out of the following side dishes: Yukon Gold mashed potatoes, scalloped potatoes, roasted butternut squash, French green beans and carrots with garlic butter, savory sage stuffing, holiday Waldorf salad.

To order, call or visit a local Metropolitan Market deli department or go to www.metropolitan-market.com/holiday.

The Houghton Center is undergoing a major facelift as they prepare for the arrival of a new Metropolitan Market, hopefully in 2010. The old Houghton Market is long gone and only a shell of the building remains. This past week a rendering was posted shedding light on what the future holds for the site.

Design work at Nelson Legacy Group’s Houghton Center in Kirkland involves both the vision for what the facility will be in 25 years and the design of an immediate upgrade to accommodate new tenants, including Metropolitan Market. The current project will remove a building front that was installed in the 1980’s. The original buildings will be exposed with a variety of store fronts and pedestrian amenities. In the long-term vision, the main level will remain retail while offices and up to six floors of residential above structured parking will be added.

The Metropolitan Market is one of the nicest grocery store chains in our region.

Grocery stores have lots of food demos and promotions, but the Metropolitan Market “For the Love of Cheese” event fascinated us because we heard directly from Molly in the cheese department, who’d been working for a long time helping plan and prepare for the big event, particularly the demonstrations yesterday and today. Above, that’s Molly, showing how they make hand-pulled mozzarrella, which MM manager Brad Halverson says is unique to their markets in this area. Our video is from Friday afternoon, but you’ll find cheese demos, samples and specials there this afternoon too:

Metropolitan Market Featured

“Proctor’s Metropolitan Market will have a variety of activities taking place including daily chocolate demos, a chocolate fondue fountain from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Oct. 10, daily chocolate samples from noon-6 p.m. of Caudeaux chocolates, Twin Brooks Creamery and Voges Chocolate, Cupcake Royale and Foire Chocolates.”

Ilga Westberg from Metropolitan Market shows off a variety of cheesy delights and discusses "For the Love of Cheese" - a cheese festival hosted at all Metropolitan Market locations form now until October 6.

Todd Korman describes himself as a foodie who takes delight in cooking.

Food, he says, “has been of intrigue to me. It’s a personal passion.”

That may explain a career that has led him from investment banking to executive vice president and chief operating officer for Metropolitan Market, a small, high-end grocery store chain.

“I don’t know if I’ve consciously chosen the grocery profession,” Korman said, but it’s a career very much to his taste.

Since joining Metropolitan Market, Korman, 39, has helped the Seattle-based chain double in size. In just three years it has grown to six stores in the Puget Sound area. Metropolitan Market will add a seventh store — its first on the Eastside — in Kirkland next spring.

Korman said he has always had a strong work ethic. He started working at the age of 14, mowing neighbors’ lawns.

“My father and mother always motivated me to earn my own way financially, socially and, to some degree, civically,” Korman said. It also helps to have a wife with “a Type A personality ... who’s been a great motivator for me to be ambitious and keep a very full plate,” Korman said.

Korman learned a lot about groceries after he moved to Seattle in 1995 to work for Exvere, a small investment bank involved in several acquisitions in which large national grocers expanded into new markets by buying smaller competitors.

He took a break from Exvere to work with his father-in-law at Meyers Distributing in 1996. It was there that Korman found he liked operating a company with a team of people working toward a common goal.

“It’s celebrating the power of the individual in the context of the team — to get them motivated and moving in one direction is an enormous job and difficult. But you can be much more successful when you look at a problem as something a team can solve versus doing it on your own.”

That desire to work with a team ultimately led Korman to his current position at Metropolitan Market.