Holiday Round-up ...

Good morning and belated Happy New Year wishes to all!

The husband and I spent a quiet New Year's Eve at home, which is just what the doctor ordered after an eventful holiday week. A couple of delicious steaks, some champagne at midnight and a few episodes of "The Honeymooners" marathon, was all this Diva needed to usher in the new year. I hope it will be a happy, healthy, peaceful and prosperous one for all of us!

This year we broke with tradition and dined on an amazing stuffed crown roast of pork for Christmas dinner. We ordered it from our favorite Italian market, Liuzzi's, and it was spectacular. All I had to do was pop it in the oven for a few hours ... then take all the credit! I made some mashed potatoes and steamed green beans to go with ... wow, it was heavenly! So good that we may well have a new holiday tradition in the making here. Yum!

Later there was mulled wine (pictured above) and all sorts of cookies, pies and desserts. Suffice it to say, our holiday was delicious in every way. And now its time to get back to business and back on the diet!

Stay tuned for some new and healthy recipes this week. I don't know about you, but I'm certainly feeling the need to detox a bit and return to a more simple - and sugar-free - way of eating!

Long-time readers will recall that this Diva is not prone to making resolutions. This year is no different - though I am planning to learn Spanish and have promised myself I'll finally get around to that blog redesign I've been planning for a year now. Only time will tell!

So, have you made an resolutions for the year? Or are you firmly in the non-resolution camp? Curious Diva wants to know.

Bon appetit!

Horses, Alpaca and Moose, Oh My!

I'm back from a week spent in sunny, Southern Vermont! A week filled with all sorts of animals, not much cooking, and precious little photography. Certainly, we ate ... our weight in amazing native corn to be precise ... but the Diva was definitely off-duty as far as food photography was concerned! Which, I suppose, is as it should be when one is on vacation.

Oddly enough, the majority of my pictures center around the exhibition of painted moose adorning the streets of Bennington, VT ... Moosefest '09, to be exact.

If you happened to catch the cows that grazed the streets of Chicago and New York a few years back, or the sheep in Pittsfield, Mass., you get the idea. Its the kind of fun, funky, public art that manages to simultaneously amuse and disappoint me. Visually, I'm a sucker for this stuff ... I mean, what's not to love about a whimsical, brightly colored moose?! Yet the art historian in me can't help but lament the fact that public art continues to be reduced to images that fail to challenge. But, I digress - and, really, that's a subject for another day, another kind of blog.

Our travels included a stop at the Alpaca Shack, located near the VT - NY border, where I learned more about these funny little creatures than I can even begin to recount. And where I met a charming llama, who - happily for me - fancies brunettes! His name is Charlie and he's pictured below with Taj Mahal, the black alpaca.

I bought some yarn, made from the fleece of Taj Mahal and some from Drake, a beautiful silvery gray alpaca, which is destined to be turned into a scarf by me later this fall ... a misshapen scarf, I'm sure!
Later in the week, we made a trip to the racetrack at Saratoga, and, for once, we both walked away winners! My patented betting system reached the pinnacle of success in the 7th race when both a gray and a "cat themed" horse finished first and second. I always bet the gray horses and I prefer to bet on those that have the word "cat" in their name. Trust me, it works ... you heard it here first.

Unbeknownst to me, the husband and I had both bet the same duo and we each won $105 on that race. Sweet. We stopped betting after that and thus ends my years long loosing streak at Saratoga. Hooray!

The balance of the menagerie includes: a beautiful turquoise hummingbird, seen outsite our living room window, a bunch of chickens that literally crossed the road in front of us, chipmunks, cows, more horses, a few goats, one lonely pig and ... one really fat mouse ... an uninvited guest in our home. Ack!

So that's my food-less report from the field. I'm back in action and heading for the kitchen. Stay tuned for a new recipe tomorrow.

Bon appetite!