What a great combo--food and wine! Whoever came up with that should get an award. They probably did.

I wanted to cook from an early age, and still remember the potato dish my mom would let me cook when I was nine. It was something like lumpy mashed potatoes that restaurants serve now, and it probably wasn't as good as I thought it was, but it was a start. Cakes were something else I liked to try my little hands at. It wasn't until much later that I got into cooking better chow. While in the Army in Washington, D.C., I learned to make pretty good lasagna for my roommates. And, I still remember the duck that we thought looked big enough to serve four, until we roasted it and found out that it was mostly fat! Well, practice makes perfect, or at least a better cook. I practiced a lot over the years, and found that I could cook about as well as most restaurant chefs do, and it certainly is a lot cheaper to eat at home. Why go out and pay good bucks for food I could cook better? My motto. 

Then there's WINE! Being raised in a conservative family, my first taste of wine wasn't until I was about 22. I wasn't crazy about it then, but somehow it's grown on me. Around 1972, I became interested in French wines, and built up a small cellar of them. However, when French wines started becoming so much more expensive than California wines, I decided to forget the French and concentrate on the home brewed stuff. By that, I mean California wines. At that time, I thought the maximum price I would pay for a bottle would be $5, and I found a lot back then. In fact, I bought a bottle of 1967 Heitz Martha's Vineyard for $3.75. Several years later when I opened it, it was selling for about $300 a bottle. Wish I'd had a case!

Full bodied wines are my favorite, but I'm willing to drink almost anything, as my friends will attest! My very favorite, I guess, are my Silver Oak cabernets. And, my oldest are a couple of bottles of Simi wine called "Claret" dated 1941. I don't think I'll open them any time soon! There is so much wine on the market, I don't understand why the prices are so high, but I guess they figure it's not going to spoil, but only improve with age.