A New Restaurant in Emory

Emory Point will be home to a brand new restaurant that is from the owners of West Egg Cafe.  A second West Egg Cafe will open at Emory Point, and this has the town talking about the new restaurants in the area.  Breakfast and lunch service have already started at the cafe, but dinner service will start this upcoming Monday.

The sound of a restaurant being born is a pleasant din — the collision of creative energy and power tools, as a mere idea transforms into the warm invitation of a real space. Ben Johnson, co-owner of General Muir. Photo by Kimber Williams.

Sitting amid the sleek new architecture of The General Muir, among a wave of restaurants and retail shops now opening at Emory Point, co-owner Ben Johnson appears content with the happy chaos — a serene captain of a ship about to set sail.

It's a bold move and unexpected direction for Johnson and his wife, Jennifer, who own and operate Atlanta's enormously popular West Egg Café, and their new partners, Chef Todd Ginsberg, recently of Bocado, and West Egg General Manager Shelley Sweet.

For months, the soon-to-open venture has been ranked among Atlanta's top new restaurants to watch, kindling a buzz among foodies all over town: Could culinary lightning possibly strike twice?

Early in Emory Point's planning stages, Cousins Properties, Inc., the firm that built and operates the complex, had approached the Johnsons about opening a second West Egg Café to offer a breakfast option within the retail and residential development on Clifton Road.

That would have been the easy and practical choice — but frankly, not a terribly creative one, Johnson acknowledges.

"We wanted to go in a different direction," he recalls. "This was a chance to be creative again, to dream up something different and new."

And so they have. In many ways, the new restaurant/deli scheduled to open this month across from Jos. A. Banks is a sentimental nod to both family and community.

Inspired by New York City's traditional — and rapidly disappearing — Jewish delis, the restaurant is named after the World War II-era refugee transport ship that carried Jennifer Johnson's maternal grandparents, both Holocaust survivors, to New York in 1949.

But its location is also a meaningful choice for Johnson's side of the family.

His father, Ben F. Johnson III, is a 1965 Emory graduate and chair of Emory's Board of Trustees — in fact, he met his wife, Ann, on the Emory campus 50 years ago this year.

And the senior Johnson was an enthusiastic supporter of the Emory Point development long before his entrepreneurial son had chosen it as a home base for his latest business venture.

Adds the younger Johnson: "The more we kicked around (the idea of Emory Point), the more we thought this would be a great area. Emory draws students from around the country, many from the Northeast. The University, the CDC, Emory Hospital, residential areas around here — it's a magnet for people from all over."

Deli classics, with a twist

In the nostalgic design of the deli/restaurant, Johnson and his partners have sought to recreate a sense of time and place — a new culinary community with old-world ambiance.

Natural light pours through windows onto sleek subway tiles, yawning marble counter tops, an old-fashioned deli case and dark woodwork. The restaurant will offer a full coffee bar, deli/counter service and a full-service dining room.

For the Johnsons, who travel to New York often, the deli direction was a natural choice. "We've always lamented that you can't get a good New York deli experience down here," he recalls.

The menu — which covers breakfast, lunch and dinner —will serve both homemade deli classics, such as pastrami, corned beef, chopped liver, and hand-rolled, kettle-boiled bagels, and specials with an unexpected twist.

"Our idea is returning to the handcrafted roots of a lot of (deli) food — if we can do it and do it well, we're going to make our own, whether it's bagels or pastrami or whatever the case may be," Johnson says. "We're trying to bring that sensibility to the entire menu."

Johnson believes he has the team to make that happen. Ginsberg, who grew up in New Jersey and New York enjoying classic delis, is said to have yearned to open a deli for much of his career. Pastry chef Lauren Raymond will add to the mix, with cheesecake, black-and-white cookies, buttery rugelach, and bagels.

There have been some definite advantages to having culinary entrepreneurs in the family, says Ben F. Johnson III: "(My son) would ask us over for dinner to test out recipes, making pulled pork over grits and say 'What do you think?' and that would become the 'pig and grits' (entrée) on The West Egg menu."

"I've been very, very pleased with how happy they both seem to be, working together and in the restaurant business," he adds. "It's nice to see your children doing what they enjoy." As for his son's decision to open a new restaurant in the shadow of Johnson's alma mater?


"I've always viewed (Emory Point) as an exciting project," he says. "The truth is, the Emory community hasn't had much new retail development for decades. The notion of a mixed-use development with 450 residential units has great potential to be both a community and a destination."

The General Muir is scheduled to begin service in late January, among a series of retail shops and restaurants opening on a staggered schedule throughout this spring.

Openings continue at Emory Point

As businesses continue to open at Emory Point, celebrations and special events have been held along the way, such as Emory discount day at Marlow's Tavern or a benefit night to support Emory Friends of Music at Bonefish Grill. Emory students are finding employment at stores like Loft, and many retailers are offering discounts to lure shoppers.

Emory Point was developed by Cousins Properties, Inc., and Gables Residential in a long-term lease agreement with Emory University, which retains ownership of the property. Cousins manages the retail space, while Gables manages the residential component.

The mixed-use development offers about 80,000 square feet in retail space and more than 400 apartments.

For more information see Emory University.

Quick and Easy Healthy Meal

Check out this great healthy and quick recipe for dinner tonight.  This quick and easy salmon recipe will be ready in 25 minutes, and is great for you to eat.

 Looking for a quick tasty meal that will only take you 25 minutes? Look no further. This recipe is only 300 calories and is full of flavor. It’s the perfect ending to a long day.

 

Ingredients

 

• 4 (5 ounces each) salmon fillets
• 2 teaspoons olive oil plus 2 tablespoons
• Salt and freshly ground black pepper
• 3 tomatoes, chopped, or 1 (14-ounce) can chopped tomatoes, drained
• 2 chopped shallots
• 2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
• 1 teaspoon dried oregano
• 1 teaspoon dried thyme

 

Directions

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.

Sprinkle salmon with 2 teaspoons olive oil, salt, and pepper. Stir the tomatoes, shallots, 2 tablespoons of oil, lemon juice, oregano, thyme, salt and pepper in a medium bowl to blend.

Place a salmon fillet, oiled side down, atop a sheet of foil. Wrap the ends of the foil to form a spiral shape.

Spoon the tomato mixture over the salmon. Fold the sides of the foil over the fish and tomato mixture, covering completely; seal the packets closed. Place the foil packet on a heavy large baking sheet. Repeat until all of the salmon have been individually wrapped in foil and placed on the baking sheet. Bake until the salmon is just cooked through, about 25 minutes. Using a large metal spatula, transfer the foil packets to plates and serve.

SERVES 4

Calories: 300

Total Fat: 18 grams

Saturated Fat: 3 grams

Protein: 29 grams

Total carbohydrates: 5 grams

Sugar: 3 grams

Fiber: 1.5 grams

Cholesterol: 78 milligrams

Sodium: 213 milligrams

For more information visit FitFreshFun.

Organize By Your Learning Style

Everyone has different ways to learn.  Did you know that you can organize your apartment by your learning style?  This will help you be the most productive when you are studying.  Keep reading to learn some tips and tricks to help with this!

A couple of the January Cure assignments coming up involve organizing your media and papers. These seem like perfectly ordinary assignments, but what if you've never quite found an organizational system that works for you? Why not try a system based on your learning style?

Most of us have heard of the three main learning styles: visual, kinesthetic, and auditory. Visual learners rely heavily on their eyesight. Graphs, diagrams, images, and the written word are incredibly helpful tools for visual learners, and they often create mental images of texts or experiences in order to remember them. Kinesthetic learners are those who learn by doing. These are the people who dive right into assembling that IKEA furniture, and who remember information that they have gained through touch and movement. Auditory learners absorb information by listening. Seminars, reading aloud, listening to books on tape or lectures: all these methods are optimal for focusing an auditory learner's attention.

I was well aware of these learning styles, but I had never thought of them as a potential organizing tool until I read The Organized Student: Teaching Children the Skills for Success in School and Beyond, in which the author Donna Goldberg suggests tailoring an organizational system to your child's particular learning style. Borrowing this idea, I've come up with some organizational techniques that might help you tap into your personal strengths.

Visual learners will benefit from an organizational system that places emphasis on color and sequence. Color-coded libraries are a bit of a contentious issue, I know, but if you are a visual learner, this might actually be an easier system to follow. You might have an easier time envisioning the cover or spine of a DVD than its title. In terms of paper organization, this might mean that you would benefit from a filing system that involves color-coded folders or different colored labels. Charts, spreadsheets, or diagrams of your collections might also help, or you might benefit from a sequentially ordered system, laid out in chart form, like this one. Additionally, it might be worthwhile to think about organizing extensive collections with tools like Delicious Library, virtual wardrobe applications, or some of these visually oriented organization applications.

Kinesthetic learners need a really hands-on process for organizing. An organizational system that involves assembly or very physical processes might work best. When setting up a new organizational system, consider a process that requires touching all of the items in question. For instance, rehousing your DVDs and putting them in binders might help solidify the memory of what order they're going in in a way that simply putting them on a shelf might not. Prolonged physical interaction with the organizational method might improve one's memory of it. Additionally, it is often easier for kinesthetic learners to remember things by association with whatever action they were performing at the time, so a filing system oriented around particular actions might work. For instance, put books or papers near the places where they will be used. Books for cooking should be near the kitchen, where the action is performed. If you only read comic books in the bathroom, then place them nearby. If you only watch DVDs in the bedroom, put them there. Associating your items' placement with the types of actions that you perform with them rather than with some place that you feel you "should" put them might help you locate them more easily.

Auditory learners could really benefit, on a basic level, from recording notes to themselves and then listening back to them. Hearing information can make it easier to retain, and as a day-to-day practice, this could help organize your to-do list. Relatedly, when you are trying out a new filing system or organizational method, it might help to talk about it with someone, to get their feedback, and to verbalize your intent with the system and your method for implementing it. Putting it into words and having an audible conversation about it might help the central tenets of the system stick. Finally, some auditory learners find it difficult to retain or process information if there is no sound in the background. Listening to music or having some form of background noise might help auditory learners concentrate while tackling their organizational tasks.

Obviously, some people have tendencies that cross these three borders, and with certain things, like bill filing, it might be much more difficult to create an auditory regime than a visual one, but if you have a difficult time with organization, some of these methods might be worth considering or testing out.

For more information see Apartment Therapy.

Humans and Songbirds Both Have A Voice

Songbirds have a beautiful voice that always stays on pitch and has a beautiful tone.  Songbirds learn to sing just like humans learn to speak.  Baby birds listen to their parents and vocalize through repetition just like humans.  Keep reading to learn about the similarities between humans and songbirds.

Scientists studying how songbirds stay on key have developed a statistical explanation for why some things are harder for the brain to learn than others.

"We've built the first mathematical model that uses a bird's previous sensorimotor experience to predict its ability to learn," says Emory biologist Samuel Sober. "We hope it will help us understand the math of learning in other species, including humans."

Sober conducted the research with physiologist Michael Brainard of the University of California, San Francisco.

Their results, showing that adult birds correct small errors in their songs more rapidly and robustly than large errors, were published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Sober's lab uses Bengalese finches as a model for researching the mechanisms of how the brain learns to correct vocal mistakes.

Just like humans, baby birds learn to vocalize by listening to adults. Days after hatching, Bengalese finches start imitating the sounds of adults. "At first, their song is extremely variable and disorganized," Sober says. "It's baby talk, basically."

For more information see Emory University.

Too Many Greeting Cards!

We love getting greeting cards during the holidays, and we are sure that you do too.  However, after the holidays no one really knows what to do with the cards that they have gathered over the past month or so.  Here are some great tips on how to save those memories without taking up a whole closet in your apartment.

1 Scan or Photograph: Keep digital copies of important cards. File them by year, occasion, or filtered in your digital photo album.

2 Turn into A Book: Send your greetings to Cards for Keeps and they'll transform them into a bound book. If you're feeling crafty, you can try doing this yourself by following the blog Something Turquoise's DIY tutorial.

3 Reuse: I love well designed greeting cards. So much thought has gone into the design, so why not turn it into something else? As long as you're okay with losing the greeting part of the card, you could frame it, cut it up and use it for another project, make it into a gift tag, etc. The options are endless!

4 Turn into A New Card: Much in the same vein as above, a card does not need to be used just once. If it's a folded card, cut it in half and use the front as a postcard.

5 Donate to a Charity: Before you toss any unwanted cards, consider donating them. St. Jude's Ranch for Children will recycle used greeting cards and turn them into new holiday and greeting cards. You can also purchase their recycled cards to support their programs and services.

For more information see Apartment Therapy.

Everyone Can Have a Winter Wonderland

In this part of the country it is warm throughout the year.  Experiencing snow is very unlikely.  However, you can create a winter wonderland right in your home.  Keep reading to learn how to create snow right in your own home.

With my husband's office Christmas party just around the corner, I have already begun decorating. It takes a while to get all of our Christmas items up and set in stone.

Last year, the main focus of our house for the party was the Florida Room, which I turned into a Santa's Toyland. This year, the focus is once again on that room but this time, I'm turning it into a snow land.

Turning any room in your house into a snow land can be fun and it offers a slightly different twist to the more traditional Christmas theme. I chose the Florida Room because it is the room in which my guests most like to congregate. Additionally, the green curtains and blue carpet lend themselves automatically to the theme.

You can do something similar for your house by using some or all of the following ideas:

Idea #1. Start the theme with the Christmas Tree. This year I scaled back my 8' tree to allow more room for seating. Instead, I chose a smaller, thinner 6' tree, which I decorated in keeping with the snow land theme.

Think about placing cotton batting inside the tree to simulate snow. To make it glisten more, accent it with aurora borealis tinsel. Glittering snowball tinsel round around the branches works well too.

Choose ornaments that fit in with the overall theme. I used old world Santas, snowmen, angels and Christmas bulbs in clear, white and silver. Then, I popped it with color by placing red glitter poinsettias and snowflakes inside the branches as well.

Use a bow made of snowmen or a similar theme as a tree topper or pick out a glistening snowflake or star topper instead. Even an angel will work if you stick to clear or aurora borealis glass or plastic or choose something done in corresponding colors.

Idea #2. Temporarily cover furniture cushions and pillows with snow themed fabric.

The floral cushions in my wicker chairs were inappropriate for my snow land theme. So I used inexpensive ($1 yard) fabric in a snow theme to temporarily cover them. A simple running whip stitch allowed me to complete the job quickly. It will also make for easy removal once Christmas is over.

To pull the fabric together with the curtains, I replaced the curtain on my door to match the cushions. I left the other green curtains in place and simply dangled snowflakes from the tops of each. I also covered throw pillows in white felt and glued matching snowflakes to the front.

You can also replace throw pillows with store bought ones if you prefer. I added a couple that fit in with the theme but also popped in a bit more color.

Idea #3. Cover surfaces with a blanket of snow.

I used several different kinds of materials to achieve the look I wanted. For the large round wicker table in the center of the room I had to use white felt. It was the only fabric I could find that was large enough to cover the circumference. The fabric was around $5 a yard but one yard was all I needed.

Snow blankets can be purchased for smaller surfaces almost anywhere that Christmas decorations are sold. I used that material for my large rectangular table. These blankets retail for anywhere from $4 to $10, depending upon their size the features (e.g., glitter, glisten, etc.)

You can also use cotton pull-apart stuffing to make snow banks on large surfaces to cover really small areas. That material is inexpensive and can be found at any arts & crafts store, at Wal-Mart or fabric stores for around $4 a bag.

Increase the glitter factor with white glitter netting from Michael's Arts & Crafts. It can be draped or round a surface. The cost is about $7 per 84" by 15" piece.

Add snow flakes made from foam, fabric, or tinsel to accent the surfaces. Also think about using glittered white poinsettias.

Don't forget the snowmen. The ones I used happened to be wine bottle covers that will house Christmas gifts for some of our party guests.

Idea #4. Decorate surfaces.

I found cute little cardboard houses at Dollar Tree that doubled as gift boxes for party guests. They were perfect for decorating the top of one of the room's tables.

Add a bouquet of flowers or a plant to bring extra pizzazz to any surface.

Idea #5. Add some stockings on the fireplace.

Even a small fireplace in the room is still perfect for stocking accents. The top or mantel also provides another surface upon which you can place plants or other decorations.

Idea #6. Sit snowmen around the room.

I picked up the giant snowman pictured at a yard sale for $5. He sits inside the door to greet guests as they arrive.

Sit other woodland creatures around on the floor, between chairs, etc. Although they are not pictured, I have the perimeters of the room strewn with snowmen, old word Santas, reindeer and more. They cover up extension cords, trash cans and other things I don't want attention called to. They also add warmth and charm to the space.

Idea #7. Pipe in music with a snow theme like "Winter Wonderland," "Frosty the Snowman," or anything else appropriate. It will help set the mood and help calm the guests and remove the stress of their day.

Have fun with the theme. Get a bit wild and crazy with ideas if you want. The whole idea is to make a fantasy room that you and your guests will enjoy.

For more information see Yahoo.com

Happy Thanksgiving!

We hope everyone has a safe and Happy Thanksgiving! Spend some time with your friends and family and remember everything in life that you are thankful for.