A year or so ago we tried Mercer’s Wine Ice Cream, made in New York State. The Port ice cream was a standout, but at the time there was no online distribution. Now, a NIBBLE reader from St. Louis writes that he tried the flavors locally, also likes the Port, and recommends a local distributor, FrostOnTheVine.com, that will ship them. There’s a four-pint minimum ($10.00 a pint plus shipping). For a special holiday dessert, that’s not bad, and the four pints will go fast. You can mix and match flavors (the others are Peach White Zinfandel, Red Raspberry Chardonnay and Royal White Riesling), but we’d stick with the Port—which is formally named Ala Port, by some person who does not understand that (a) Port is named after the Portuguese town of Porto (a.k.a. Oporto) from whence the wine was originally shipped, not after the French word for door (la port), (b) one should never make up fake French, but if one must, one should spell it correctly (À la Port, not Ala Port), and (c) if you have four flavors in a line, you should follow a nomenclature—not serve up three names in English and one in “French.”

You can’t make these at home: Freezing alcohol and ice cream (or sorbet) successfully is something even the professionals have to work at. For a great line of wine sorbets, read our review of Wine Cellar Sorbets, a NIBBLE Top Pick Of The Week. You can find more of our favorite ice creams and sorbets in the Desserts Section of THE NIBBLE online magazine. And for the answers to the differences between ice cream, French ice cream, sorbet, sherbet and other frozen delights, check out our Ice Cream & Frozen Desserts Glossary.

Many women will be at least a little jealous of Kathleen Flinn. At age 36, she leaves her high-powered corporate job to pursue her lifelong dream of attending Le Cordon Bleu Culinary School in Paris. She falls in love not only with the City of Light, but with a man she eventually marries. And, she gets a book deal to write about it all. It has all the makings of a Lifetime movie.

The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry is not just a story about all the feel-good moments in Flinn’s life. She also records the many trials and tribulations of attending culinary school—the backstabbing, the stress, the intimidating chefs and the grueling classes. But, her feelings of self-doubt are quelled by her motivation to receive her Superior Cuisine diploma—despite the fact that she never intends to be a professional chef but just an excellent home cook. Flinn shares many recipes as well as hilarious stories of her many house-guests, including one particularly repugnant self-dubbed “wine snob.”

We finished this book in just a matter of days and really wished there were a second volume. Is Flinn still cooking regularly? Where does she work now? Is her husband still a knight in shining armor? The Sharper Your Knife, The Less You Cry reads like good, romantic fiction, except that it all actually happened.