Florida Tarpons open arena season
The Florida Tarpons opened their inaugural season in the Ultimate Indoor Football League last Friday night with a resounding 58-35 win over the Mississippi Hound Dogs. The UIFL is an arena football league, with teams from the southern States, with a couple of exceptions. The league is the brainchild of Andrew Haines and Michael Taylor, […]
Song and dance on the palate
The center of the Pays de la Loire region, is located approximately 60 km. inland from the estuary of the Loire River which, in turn, feeds into the Atlantic Ocean. Not surprisingly, its wine is renowned for an excellent ability to pair with seafood, in particular oysters. Muscadet is a dry white wine made exclusively […]
Magical places
Libraries. Really! Our public libraries are on the chopping block? Is this what we’ve come to, putting our cultural assets and social institutions on the market? What the H E double late fines is this scroogey-crap all about? When did Prince Edward County become Toronto? When did Mayor Rob Ford become a mentor for this […]
What’s in a (grape) name
Nowadays, we customarily choose wine by its grape varietal name (i.e. Chardonnay or Cabernet Sauvignon) but this option is not always available, notably with wines from Europe. California growers heavily promoted varietal wine marketing in the late 1970s, and consumers gravitated toward this method of selecting their wines. Instead of ordering a glass of white […]
Justin Taylor – enjoying the hockey life
Outside the visitors’ dressing room in the Germain Arena, there is a stationary bike. There was a lineup to get on the bike following the game last Friday night. When I caught up with Justin Taylor, he was busy on that bike. Like many other hockey players, he likes to wind down after a game. […]
Spring training 2012
We are experiencing the kind of weather when a young man’s fancy turns to…Baseball! For that matter, a young woman’s fancy as well. Not that I struggle to be politically correct. The pitchers and catchers arrived a couple of weeks ago, as did a few others hoping to glean a few extra brownie points. At […]
The phrase phase
For a while, my favourite book genre was the mystery novel. Fortunately, Ruth Rendell seemed to produce them at a rate that was greater than anyone’s capacity to read them. Then it became political non-fiction. At one point, I might have leaped upon Brian Mulroney’s voluminous memoirs even though they made no reference to brown […]
Reactionary gal
I get asked a lot of questions about this column. Sometimes the answers are easy to cough up. Other times, not so much. A man recently asked where I got the “ideas” for my column. I told him I often write about things in my everyday life. “Like the Christmas tree that kept falling down?” […]
An enduring tradition
Ontarians are justifiably proud of their award-winning dessert and ice wines. Today, however, I want to write about a French dessert wine that has been in production for over two millennia: the iconic Muscat de Beaumes de Venise, made from muscat blanc à petit grains. This grape is among the oldest grape varieties still in […]
Survivors
Some of my best friends are survivors. Yup, they are. I’m sure, if you’ve been reading my columns for a few years, you’ll remember my family’s personal journey through bypass surgeries. LOML is a heart-bypass surgery survivor. His is a genetic problem not related to his lifestyle. My father, on the other hand, was a […]