Flowers weren't always the mild-mannered simile for beauty they are today. Take dahlias: harmless filler flower now, formerly the Aztec flower of war, the bloom of choice to accompany human sacrifices to the Serpent Woman.

(I feel like I just broke some unspoken rule about keeping the phrase "human sacrifices" out of feel-good flower posts. Oh well.)

Then there's tulips. Today they crowd the entrance to every convenience store, yet during Holland's Tulpenwoede ("tulip fury") a single bulb was once sold in exchange for several loads of wheat, oxen, a mess of pigs, a dozen sheep, booze, butter, 1000 lbs of cheese, a bed, a suit of clothes and a silver beaker (see Torontonian Andrew Smith's excellent "Strangers in the Garden".)

Proust said he only had to think of lilacs to smell their scent. For those of us with less vivid sense memory, here is a short list of some of Toronto's best florists (which almost never trade in oxen).

You can't swing a Danish teak side table without hitting a great vintage furniture store in Toronto. Vintage furniture can be bought as-is, refurbished, or you can get vintage essence by picking up a reproduction of a classic.

Most of the stores listed here offer a little of all of the above. But they're all good options, and they all get us out of the stores where one beige starts to look very much like another, and back into the scary and exciting world of personal style.

Tea people are just nice people. They're as knowledgeable and passionate about their product as coffee people, only slightly less keyed up and twitchy.

And, let's just get it out of the way, when we're talking about tea, we're talking places that specialize in looseleaf tea (one exception to be spotted below). Most prepacked bagged tea is made with the bits and pieces left over after sorting out the tea leaves. They take the sweepings, the tea "dust", the remnants of real tea, then they bag them, and we drink it. You deserve better than bagged floor scrapings.

As Mugatu famously said "Cupcakes are so hot right now." Apparently Toronto doesn't just have Fashion, Theatre and Financial districts, we also have a Cupcake district. Queen Street East is dominating the cupcake industry. Of the 10 cupcake destinations below, 4 of them, count'em, four, are located along Queen Street East. (5 if you count Dufflet's Beach location). Eastenders are a bit cupcake crazy. And that's a crazy I can get behind.

Most of these shmancy cupcakes don't come cheap. It's around a $3 minimum per indulgence. Which, big picture, isn't actually that much. If money were experiences, the cost of a cupcake would be about equivalent to a ride on the TTC. Public transit is a lot like a cupcake actually. They're both colourful, and satisfying, and, um, they smell good and. No wait. Analogy.. falling.. apart.

For full disclosure, here's my bias in judging cupcakes: I like cupcakes that taste fresh, and are soft and moist. Substance over style. Not that I don't enjoy haute couture confectionery, I do. There's an urban hipster in me trying to get out. But when we get down to it, yummy treats go in the belly, not in the eyes. (Unless someone's really mad at you and expresses it by chucking a cupcake in your face. But I digress.)

The only criteria that unites the category of "sandwich" is the presence of some sort of bread. So long as there's bread wrapped around or on either side of something edible, you can call it a sandwich. It's a blank canvas, open to anyone with some filler and an idea.

This list captures just some of what Toronto has to offer. Vegetarians won't love California Sandwiches' veal meatball option, but they'll be well-served by Urban Herbivore. If you're more in the mood for slow roasted meat, look to Black Camel. Because when you think of a spitting dromedary, you think good meat sandwich. Or at least you might after trying their brisket.

Bread is one of the most concise and versatile film props. It was bread that finally drove Sam and Frodo apart. Yet when a film needs to look idyllic, the art director can still just pop a baguette in the scene (preferrably sticking jauntily out of a bike basket) and take the rest of the day off.

Toronto's taste in bread is growing up. We're getting away from the "how many grains can you fit in a loaf" game, which, while fun, isn't all that bread has to offer. These days we're favouring artisanal loaves, and we won't settle for any bread without a crust sturdy enough knock a man out at a thousand paces.