Cooking with Sin...and evening with Carla Johnson

Tonight a friend was having a book signing at a local restaurant and Paul and I went out to support her. It was lovely, Carla was wonderful. I had the opportunity to travel to Europe with Carla as well as a few others last year. We spent many nights together in Greece, Italy and Rome sipping on wine exchanging words of our life experiences and then slowly waking the next day to many hours walking through historically beautiful sites. It was a treasure and mostly a pleasure to have had the chance to meet Carla and her lovely family and to continue a friendship here in Canada.
Her book is unique, it is filled with recipes sent in from people who have incorporated some form of alcohol into the ingrediants. There are recipes with Cherry, wine, beer and many other choices of sinfully delicious beverages. Tonight I purchased my copy, Carla signed it and Paul and I enjoyed tasting one of the recipes.
Its nice being at this stage in life, what I mean is my children being older and Paul and I having more alone time again with one another. We have the opportunity to cook together, try different things in the kitchen and even cook with alcohol and not worry about our kids tasting something that may not suit their palates. Thankfully they are both up to trying anything new, and once told "this hamburger was cooked with beer"...guaranteed my son will want seconds!!
So, each recipe in the book comes with a family story or history of how this recipe has affected the family it came from. Kinda like grandma's secret cookie recipe...we all have a relative that keeps a certain family treasure secret and only passes it on to certain family members...making them swear with their lives that they won't EVER tell anyone!!
Paul and I will get alot of time together having fun in the kitchen with this book. Even late Saturday nights maybe we'll pull this book out and accompany it with a bottle of wine and start cooking up something that stimulates our sense's...god only know's what can happen after that!! ;)
I remember back in the day when the kids were little and we were exhausted after a full week of playdates, working, therapy appts, doctor appts, and quality time as a family...we would late at night plan to cook something tasty. Just the two of us..maybe some garlic shrimp or lobster. Paul has always been great at coming up with some new ideas to cook different "adult" foods on our date nights. I miss those nights...thats the part that sucks about children getting older. They now stay up later than us, the kitchen is no longer a kid free zone after 9pm on a Saturday night. Usually it is the "teenage zone" on a Saturday night. But with this book...I guarantee there will be one Saturday night a month set aside for just us two! Once again...there will be some good cookin going on in the kitchen, and I don't just mean the food!!!
Thank you Carla for the wonderful visit this evening, Paul and I are eager to get cookin"

If any one is interested in purchasing Carla's book, feel free to message me and i'll hook you up!!