Here in Alsace it's pretty chilly, and we had a premature snowfall a couple of weeks back. Time for some calories: go to my website, www.suestyle.com, and click on What's Cooking This Month - it's packed with puddings, following some fun we had at a recent desserts workshop. Next up will be some great do-ahead dishes for the holidays. On the restaurant front, you've got just a few days to get to Olivier Roellinger's legendary place in Brittany, the Maison de Bricourt, before he hands back his stars and closes down - and if you don't manage it, go to Travels & Tastings for a nice bit of nostalgie and a chance to relive one of the Spice King's glorious meals.

For more recipe ideas, go to my Recipe Archive where you'll find stuff that appeared earlier on the site. The Travels and Tastings Archive has a selection of published articles on food, wine and travel.

The vendanges are over, the vats are busily bubbling away, it's time to plan some wine tasting trips. Before you set out, consider www.winetravelguides.com, a practical online guide to France's vineyards which is a mine of info on the top growers in each of the main wine-growing regions, plus where to stay and where to eat. I wrote the three Alsace micro-regions, and there's a major update in progress for 2009.

On a recent snowy day we zipped up into the vineyards and looked in on two diametrically different domaines: Rolly Gassmann in Rohrschwihr (www.rollygassmann.fr, under construction) and Meyer-Fonné in Katzenthal (www.chez.com/meyerfonne). They both work with the same grape varieties, but the similarities stop there. Pierre Gassmann's wines are massive, opulent and rich in residual sugar - in many years over half the estate's wines are either Vendanges Tardives or Sélection de Grains Nobles. Félix Meyer's are right at the other end of the sweetness scale, crisp and dry. Who said that there isn't an Alsace wine for everyone?

Have fun, visit again soon!

sue