Start the new year with a new Bloody
Mary recipe. Photo © S. Mario | Fotolia.

The world is full of them:

• Bloody Mary variations without tomato juice: Bloody Bull, Bloody Eight Ball, Bloody Mariner and even the Bloody LeRoy, which replaces the tomato juice with barbecue juice (in case you have some barbecue in the fridge to go with it).
• Latin-inspired Bloody Marys: Bloody Maria and Chipotle Maria
• International Bloody Marys that replace vodka with the local favorite: Danish Mary, Highland Mary, Russian Mary and more.

As cocktails go, the Bloody Mary, with vodka, tomato juice, citrus juice, seasonings, and a celery stick, is as healthy as it gets. If your New Year’s Resolutions include dieting, switch that sugar-laden Appletini, Cosmo, Mojito or Margarita for the Mary of your choice (well, maybe not the Bloody LeRoy).

• Get all of the Bloody Mary recipes above.

You become a butcher! “Julie And Julia: My Year Of Cooking Dangerously” author Julie Powell has released her next book, “Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession”, her “Julie and Julia” marriage gone awry “set against a backdrop of butchery.”

Most of “Cleaving” was written while Powell was an apprentice at Fleisher’s, a grass-fed and organic meat butcher shop in Kingston, New York. We haven’t read the book, but a colleague who did passes on her wishes for “more food and less sex—does anybody care about Julie Powell’s sex life?” (Yes: People who buy books to make into films will probably like it just the way it is.)

Fleisher’s has launched a formal butchery apprentice program that has already graduated three successful butchers. If your New Year’s plans include training in the culinary arts, learn more about Fleisher’s butcher classes.

As the Fleisher’s folks say, Carne diem!

• Learn your cuts of beef and cuts of lamb in our two popular meat glossaries.

This could be you, learning the craft (and
trade) of fine butchering. Photo courtesy Fleisher’s.

This is the second part of our “The Best Of 2009”: the Top Pick Of The Week specialty and gourmet food products that have become a permanent part of our lives. This week, our picks are the sweet stuff.

Since we’ve chosen “everyday foods,” our list doesn’t include the fabulous boxes of gourmet chocolate that are special-occasion buys. But don’t worry: All of our picks are indulgences.

You can click to the original reviews via the bulleted links below, or read our “Best of 2009” full review to learn why these have been added to our favorite treats list.

Spend more time with friends and family in the New Year by entertaining more often and more easily.

Don’t focus on a formal event that takes time to plan and costs a lot of money. Think casual, and simply set aside 2 hours a month to catch up with people you don’t see often enough, or with those you’ve met but haven’t had the chance to see again.

Make it a regular event and set aside the second Friday evening or third Sunday afternoon of the month, for example. Invite 4 to 8 people over for a mini-tasting:

Try different teas, mineral waters, Spanish cheeses, single-origin chocolate bars—whatever you’d like to learn more about.

The group will enjoy mixing and discovering new specialty foods; small groups are easier and less expensive to manage and guests mix more easily.

Spend an evening with sparkling wines and
triple-crême cheeses (here, Brie and
Champagne). Photo courtesy Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board.

• Buying cheese for tonight? Double-crême and triple-crême cheeses like Brillat-Savarin, Brie, Camembert, Explorateur and Saint-André are the way to go with sparkling wines. Learn more in our Cheese Glossary.

Krug Champagne, our favorite. We toast
every new year with it.

Here are our Champagne and sparkling wine recommendations from a few years ago. We’re tasting them all tonight to update the article.

• Krug is still our favorite (but pricey).
• In addition to tête de cuvee bottle in the article, we also love the vintage or nonvintage Pol Roger and Bollinger Champagnes, which have a higher concentration of Pinot Noir and are more robust.
• If you like your bubbly on the more delicate side, Taittinger, a blanc de blanc (only Chardonnay grapes, instead of a combination of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir), is a perennial favorite, too.
• For great taste on a budget, we’re fans of [yellow tail] sparkling wine, called [yellow tail] Bubbles, and the [yellow tail] Bubbles Rosé, a beautiful rose color as well.

HAPPY NEW YEAR from all of us at THE NIBBLE. We’ll be nibbling hard for you in 2010.