The President's Choice® brand offers exciting new foods to help make the most of the holiday season

The holidays start here

BRAMPTON, ON, Nov. 8, 2012 /CNW/ - TSX: L - The holidays are the perfect excuse to catch up with old friends, spoil loved ones and indulge in delicious, festive meals. Start the holidays at Real Canadian Superstore^®, and prepare to make your party pop with delicious hors d'oeuvres to desserts and everything in between for holiday entertaining at home. To start, check out the President's Choice^® Holiday Insider's Report^® - it's your guide to all the holiday essentials to make this busy season as wonderful (and easy) as ever.

"Once again this season, we wanted to treat our customers to savoury tastes and exciting new products that help make the most of the holiday, minimizing prep work and maximizing time with friends and family," says Maria Charvat, vice-president of product development, Loblaw Companies Limited.

Visit us on YouTube to find easy entertaining ideas from a One Pot Meal perfect for weeknights to a Smoked Salmon Brunch Bar for New Year's Day and delicious Shortbread bars for friends and family that drop by for a visit.

You can find our newest holiday recipes that will leave you with time to spend with your family and friends online at pc.ca. We also want to hear about your holiday entertaining stories and favourite dishes. You can talk to us on Facebook or on Twitter (@preschoice, #PCholiday).

Easy entertaining. Celebrate the gift of time, and taste!

• New! PC^® Smoked Salmon Dip, New! PC^® Three Cheese Peperoncini Dip and New! PC^® Greek Yogurt French Onion Dip.  Put dips on your VIP list! Whether using the traditional way as a spread or a topping, the PC^® dips are a quick and tasty way to add garnish and flavour.
• Must Try! PC^® Triple Cream Mini Brie: The perfect size for one, or two if you want to share, they're wonderful for holiday parties whether they're part of a cheese board or wrapped in puff pastry and topped with a jelly or compote. Made with 100% Canadian milk.
• New! PC^® Cendre des Anges Soft Surface-Ripened Cheese with Vegetable Ash: Translated from French as "angel ash", this new cheese is nothing short of heavenly. The delicate line of vegetable ash around the perimeter of the brie appears once the cheese is sliced. This exquisite revelation along with the distinctive oval shape of the cheese is oh-so-visually appealing!

Make your party pop! Start your evening with the best appetizers

• Must Try! PC^® Jalapeno Beef Lollipops are juicy, all-beef meatballs with pieces of fiery jalapeno pepper, wrapped in smoky bacon and skewered with bamboo - perhaps the most exciting thing we have ever done to a meatball, and perfect for a Sunday football feast!
• New! PC^® Manitaropita: Like traditional spanakopita, the new manitaropita is a traditional, hand-folded Greek pastry. An exquisitely flaky phyllo wrapper surrounds mushrooms and a blend of cream cheese, feta and cottage cheeses. Pair them with New! PC^® Chicken Samosas Hors D'Oeuvres and New! PC^® Sweet and Sour Pork Bites to create an enticing platter with global flavour.
• New! PC^® Blue Menu® Cocktail Sausage Rolls: The savoury chicken filling with a touch of Dijon mustard offers a burst of flavour just like PC^® Cocktail Sausage Rolls, but we managed to reduce the fat in the golden puff pastry by one-third while maintaining its light, flaky texture!

Work is the only tradition not included!

• Must Try! PC^® Easy-Carve™ Turkey Breast Roast with Cranberry Stuffing and Gravy is a succulent, boneless stuffed turkey breast perfect for serving four to six people. Ready in about three hours, it's pre-stuffed with savoury cranberry stuffing and comes with our home-style gravy.
• Must Try! PC^® Potato Leek Vegetable Medley for Soup contains a delicious mix of pre-washed and cut vegetables perfect for a fresh pot of soup for four. Just combine with a box of PC^® Blue Menu® Chicken Broth and the soup is on the table in less than 30 minutes. Let someone else do all the work!
• Must Try! PC^® Roasting Vegetables are a peeled, chopped and washed blend of red potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots and red onions to save you loads of time. Just place them in a roasting pan with some olive oil, a little salt and pepper and they'll be ready from the oven in less than an hour.

It's not just sweet, it's eye candy!

• New! PC^® Milk Chocolate Covered Toffee Popcorn is freshly-popped popcorn in a blanket of sweet toffee then coated with rich milk chocolate for an absolute explosion of flavours and textures. Sweet and savoury, crunchy and creamy, this popcorn covers all the bases.
• New! PC^® Old-Fashioned handcrafted Candy Canes have a real nostalgic quality about them, perhaps because they're truly artisanal. All handcrafted, they put the art of candy-making back into candy canes. In five festive flavors and measuring about eight inches long, they're super for stocking stuffers and make an artsy addition to holiday wrapping and decorating.
• New! PC^® Chocolate Covered Potato Chips are an unforgettable over-the-top snack. They start with thick, ridged potato chips that could stand up to being smothered in a generous coating of rich milk chocolate. Every bite allows for a big hit of milk chocolate that slowly melts as it mingles with the salty and still ever-so-crunchy chips underneath.

Simple is sweet, it's time for dessert!

• Must Try! PC^® Mini Chocolate Cupcakes are the perfect holiday treat and guaranteed to satisfy any sweet-tooth. These rich miniature delights are simply chocolate disguised as cupcakes - just the right amount of dessert after a filling holiday feast.
• Must Try! PC^® Salted Toffee Cheesecake Lollipops: Your guest may prefer just a sampling of something sinful for dessert - and you can't get much more wicked than our new PC^® Cheesecake Lollipops. Our creamy cheesecake is enrobed in luxurious chocolate and sprinkled with crunchy salted toffee pieces for a blissful blend of sweet salty flavour that will bring you to your knees. Also available in Triple Chocolate.
• Must Try! PC^® Banana Crème Dulce de Leche Dessert Cookies are made with some of the same irresistible ingredients as a dessert! So if banana cream pie is your thing, you've got to try our cookies, with a centre of sweet, caramelized dulce de leche and a rich layer of banana-flavoured crème. Also available in Lemon Meringue and Apple Crumble, this is the perfect treat for anyone you really, really want to butter up.

Satisfy Your Inner Foodie™

Rich flavours, sultry combinations and inspired ingredients can be found in our hottest new PC^® black label products. The PC^® black label collection brings our exceptional array of fine foods and flavours from around the world and here at home, to the grocery store with the value and convenience you expect from the brand.  Available at select Loblaw banner grocery stores across Canada, foodies and at-home chefs can enjoy this exquisite range of ingredients and products, from sauces and marinades, to confectionary items, condiments, spreads, pastas and more. New this holiday season, try New! PC^® black label Cherry and Vanilla Fruit Spread, New! PC^® black label Aged 36 Months Parmigiano Reggiano Hard Ripened Cheese and New! PC^® black label salted Caramel Ice Cream.

You'll find our newest and some of our most exciting President's Choice^® products ever offered in this year's Holiday Insider's Report^® available November 9, 2012 to January 3, 2013.

Grocery stores in Alberta, Saskatchewan and Manitoba that feature President's Choice^® products and your holiday essentials include: Real Canadian Superstore®, Your Independent Grocer™, nofrills®, Extra Foods®, Real Canadian Wholesale Club®.

About Loblaw Companies LimitedTSX:L

Loblaw Companies Limited, a subsidiary of George Weston Limited, is Canada's largest food retailer and a leading provider of drugstore, general merchandise and financial products and services. Loblaw is one of the largest private sector employers in Canada. With more than 1,000 corporate and franchised stores from coast to coast, Loblaw and its franchisees employ more than 135,000 full-time and part-time employees. Through its portfolio of store formats, Loblaw is committed to providing Canadians with a wide, growing and successful range of products and services to meet the everyday household demands of Canadian consumers. Loblaw is known for the quality, innovation and value of its food offering. It offers Canada's strongest control (private) label program, including the unique President's Choice^®, no name^® and Joe Fresh^® brands. In addition, the Company makes available to consumers President's Choice Financial^® services and offers the PC^® points loyalty program.

Product samples, regional versions of the President's Choice^® Holiday Insider's Report^® and high-resolution images are available.

SOURCE: Loblaw Companies Limited

or to arrange an interview please contact:

Loblaw Companies Limited
905-459-2500/[email protected] 

Mallory Oudendag, Hill+Knowlton Strategies
403-268-7853/[email protected]