Valentine’s Day is here again, and if you’ve known me for a while, you’ll know I’m always on the lookout for a novel, non-cheesy way to share the love, hopefully without putting on ten pounds in the process.

I have a thing about chocolates (too predictable) and roses (ditto). Dinner at a fab resto is always good, but what if you’re planning a quiet, romantic weekend at home (sans kids, of course)? I’ve always enjoyed preparing a meal for my loved-ones, and I think a well thought-out meal prepared with love can be a wonderful way to say “I love you”.

So, we’ve decided on a romantic dinner at home; now we need a theme. This year, I thought I’d go to my youngest daughter for inspiration. Her favourite colour is pink and, well, it does go with the day, so I set about pulling together a pink menu. But not in a cheesy, pink food colouring way. Just a loose thread tying the meal elements together. I’ll serve prime-rib (pink rare, of course) with roasted baby red potatoes and asparagus – yes, I know asparagus is green, but I’m making the cheese sauce with a lovely and nippy lightly-pinked aged sherry-cheddar from the specialty cheese store. Dessert is raspberry gelato (it’s my all-time fave) but there’s still a gap. What to drink?

The local CBC talk radio station interviewed a sommelier yesterday, and her recommendation for Valentine’s Day bevy was a rosée wine. Okay, obviously a sommelier knows more about wine than me, but I just have this thing about rosées. They just seem too Ernest & Julio Gallo, too Arbor Mist. 

So I was beginning to get desperate on the drink front: pink lemonade??? Luckily I believe in serendipity, and she came through for me this time. I got an email with a recipe suggestion that fit the bill perfectly: it’s a Florida Grapefruit Aphrodisiac mocktail!

The great thing about this drink is that it’s both spicy and sweet (wink, wink) but it won’t dull the senses the way a half-bottle of rosée will. Whether you’re planning a pink-themed meal or not, I think this is one drink you should make for your Valentine this year.

Bottoms up!

Florida Grapefruit Aphrodisiac 
Serves 2

5 oz chilled 100 per cent pure Florida grapefruit juice, freshly-squeezed or in a carton
2 teaspoons of acacia honey
2 half slices of pineapple (1 cm thick)
1 small piece of ginger

Crush the ginger in a mortar and pestle and add to a shaker, along with the pineapple, honey and Florida grapefruit juice. Add a few ice cubes as well. Close the shaker and shake until the sides are cold. Open the shaker and pour into a glass with the help of a sieve to remove the ice cubes and pulp. Pour into a tall glass and serve.

I've been thinking a lot lately about childhood (for one reason or another), and one of the things I cannot help but notice is the amazing influence technology has had on my children.

I remember thinking of all the amazing advances my grandmothers had witnessed in their lives: the invention of cars, telephones, television, commercial air travel and the invention of the computer. Wow, I used to think, how mind-blowing that all these things I take for granted didn't exist when my grandmothers were girls.

Now I pause a moment and think of the contrasts in technology between a single generation's girlhoods.

TECHNOLOGICAL BREAKTHROUGHS I REMEMBER:

Cable. Our first converter was connected to the TV through a cord, and it was this big, brown box with buttons you pressed to get the different channels. And you had to get a special sticker from the cable company so you'd know "what cable" channel seven was on. We called it "the clicker" because that's what it did, and "remote" wasn't a concept that applied to channel changing at that time.

Personal Computers. The first computer I ever touched was a Commodore VIC-20 that the school owned. For those who don't remember, it was a keyboard you plugged in to a TV. It had a whopping memory of FIVE KILOBYTES of RAM. Yes, five. Yes, KILObytes. By comparison, my iPod has 120 GB of RAM. GIGAbytes, people: that's 10 to the power of 9.

Mobile Phones. My first real job after university was working as a Training Instructor at Cantel (now Rogers Wireless). That was back in the days of the "brick phone", when cellular was a brand-new technology reserved for the very rich.

The Internet. I was a bit of an early adopter here. I was online as early as 1993 in the university computer lab, and I bought my first modem in 1994. Back then, all we did was go to  usenets. There were very few graphical websites, and in fact I remember kind of hating sites that were graphics-heavy - so slow to load that I'd type in the url, wait for the dial, hiss and beep of the modem and then go make a cup of tea and a snack while the page loaded!

My kids? Well, they'll tell stories about our first sattelite dish and PVR, and laugh about the days when your mobile phone didn't have a 6 megapixel camera and internet-browsing capability. They already use google as a verb, and soon they'll forget a whole class of letters (vowels) as they txt thr bffs.

And only a few of us old cronies, sitting in our automatic massaging ultramatic rockers at the retirement home, will chuckle at the old joke:

c:\
c:\dos
c:\dos run

I tell ya! They don't tell 'em like that anymore!

My five year-old daughter and her friend playing make-believe in the living room:

DAUGHTER: "Pretend I'm the mom, and you're the kid."

FRIEND: "And you're a teenager."

DAUGHTER: "Teenagers aren't moms!"

FRIEND: "Some of them are."

DAUGHTER: "Yeah, but I don't want to be a teenager mom."

Whew! Now that's a relief!