We're on the home stretch for the holidays now.  Our older boys will soon be home from college and there's lots of menus to plan.  They both have birthdays in December, we have our big annual Christmas Eve open house to plan for and then out of town guests coming right after Christmas.  There's a couple of favorites that I plan to include in the Christmas Eve buffet - Sicilian Arancine, Pine Nut Croccante and these wonderful Sparkling Cranberries from Heidi that are so beautiful to put out in a big bowl.  Please look to the bottom of this post for some additional holiday links that I thought you might like.  They are worth checking out.

In the beginning of the new cookbook, Seafood alla Siciliana, author Toni Lydecker quotes Goethe:  "To have seen Italy without having seen Sicily is not to have seen Italy at all, for Sicily is the clue to everything".   And you'll certainly feel this way after reading this beautiful book.  When the publisher contacted me and sent me a copy, I couldn't wait to read it - after all, this is where my mother was from.  This is not just a collection of recipes but an in depth look at Sicily itself - its history, its food, its wine, its culture.