My husband is a wine drinker. He usually prefers red wines, but white sparkling wines excite his taste buds as well. Usually he has a glass of wine with dinner, but oddly enough only when we're having a meat-based meal. And since half our meals are non-meat-based, he doesn't drink daily, but when he does he certainly enjoys it. It's nothing new, he's always liked wine with his meals.

As for me, I rarely drink anything but tea. It's my beverage of choice on all occasions. But we both enjoy eating, and often look for new whole food items to introduce into our diet. Or ways to prepare foods that we're familiar with. The result being that we're both interested in scanning recipes; perhaps more for ideas on how to incorporate different ethnic-based cuisines, than to follow any given recipe.

When my husband makes his occasional trips to pick up wine he also often picks up a glossy public relations publication put out by the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, the source of our wine-buying escapades. It's free in the sense that you don't pay for it directly; rather it's paid for through the stiff prices that the LCBO can command through its outlets, as the sole venue in the province for liquor purchasing. Beer is obtained from another enterprise, The Beer Store. In the province of Quebec liquors can be purchased at any local store.


It's an obvious enough advertising device in large format with wonderful photographs and includes intriguing recipes; at least some of them. Always, with a recipe comes the recommendation for the wine that would best complement it.

We've tried one of their recipes for banana cake and found it wanting, to say the least. A few days ago we tried a different version of the classic French onion soup. This one started out with the sliced onions being roasted after drizzling them with balsamic vinegar and olive oil. That was actually a method to give a different, and appreciated taste to the soup. Spoiled, however, by the addition of potatoes that the recipe also called for.

What usually works best, I've found, is using my very own memory to dredge up recipes that I've used countless times over the many years I've been baking and cooking. There's far more satisfaction in the outcomes, and it's far easier to use what I know in the various food categories, and then just improvise. Invariably, the resulting product is just what we wanted. With experience and success comes repetition, but that isn't at all bad, since the choice selections are myriad.

This morning, when I finished baking a blueberry pie and preparing bread dough for pizza, and putting on a chicken soup to cook, our two little black scamps did their utmost to help me clean things up; anything, even a mote of flour, that happened to fall to the floor was immediately scooped up by them; they're far quicker than I am, in trying to prevent them from eating what they don't need to have. That's when it's time to give them a chewy and let them vent their teeth frustration out on it.