Benvenuti! Welcome to Domenicacooks.com. Lots going on in the kitchen these days. I was invited to my first virtual cocktail party, hosted by my friend Kara Newman. Kara blogs about wine for Serious Eats, and her articles on wine and spirits have appeared in The New York Times, Wine Enthusiast, and Gourmet. Her beautiful book on cocktails, Spice & Ice, was recently published by Chronicle Books (coincidentally, the same publisher of my books). Click here to find out what tempting cocktail I brought to Kara’s party and head over to Kara’s Spice & Ice blog to see what others brought.

I was also lucky enough to be invited back to judge the 7th Annual Chowder Throwdown at the Severn Sailing Association, in Annapolis, MD. This is the second year I was asked to participate in the competition (actually the word ‘throwdown’ was my embellishment). I landed this assignment after I wrote an article for the Washington Post about chowder. Shortly after the piece ran I was contacted by one Sean Smith, a member of the SSA and the event’s organizer. Click here to read more about the competition and get the exclusive recipes for the two winning entries.

I invite you to also visit my weekly cheese blog, Say Cheese, which is posted every Tuesday as part of the Washingtonpost.com’s group food blog, All We Can Eat. Here is a link to my most recent column on kitchens, which appears monthly in the Washington Post’s Local Living Section. And click here to learn more about my cookbooks, The Glorious Soups and Stews of Italy, and Big Night In, which was recently named one of the best 25 cookbooks of the year by the editors of Food and Wine. My third cookbook, on pasta, is scheduled to be published by Chronicle Books in 2011, so stay tuned.