Typical enough for Ottawa, our weather has been zig-zagging all over the place.  Mostly we've been given nature's smile in the guise of sun and gentle breezes allied with comfortable temperatures, but we've also been laughed at by her flinging hot and humid days at us, interspersed with windy, cool and overcast days.

Today is one of those cool, windy and overcast days.  We've shut the furnace off weeks ago, but last night's low temperature was 8 degrees and it felt cold enough for the furnace to go on.  Last week at this time we were sweltering in excessively hot and damp conditions with the temperature at 30 degrees.  So last week we had a Caesar salad for dinner in acknowledgement of the heat.

This week, we'll revert to our usual Friday-night dinner.  I'm planning to smother chicken breasts to roast in the oven (the heat from which will no doubt nicely warm up the kitchen, but not excessively given the circumstances) with ginger, soya sauce and tomato slices.

And lost for what to bake this time around for dessert, I've done some good old butter tarts.  There was once a local recipe contest for butter tarts, which I've been baking since forever, it seems.  I sent in my recipe, as did countless other people, and the public was later advised (it was a recipe contest put on by our local newspaper) that all recipes that replaced butter with margarine were summarily eliminated from the contest, since it was a "butter" tart contest.

I had always used a heart-healthier alternative to butter, Becel margarine.  I continue to use that ingredient in lieu of butter for most of my baking.  This time around, however, I decided to use butter.