The honours, all mine: The head of the Diva Q team clutches her well-earned trophies

She smoked the competition on the Ontario barbecue circuit, has taken a prize for Best International Team at the prestigious Jack Daniel’s Invitational in Lynchburg, Tennessee, and earned an invite to the National Barbeque Association’s showdown in Georgia. Now the grilling goddess, Danielle Dimovski—better known as Diva Q—brings her fiery style to Toronto for the first annual Crazy Canuck Championships at Woodbine Park on June 20.

“There’s not much I haven’t put on a barbecue,” says the self-described OCB (obsessive compulsive barbecuer); she’s even tried ice cream bars and chocolate cheesecake, the Death by Diva, which won top honours in a Kansas City competition. When we catch her, she’s tending to 50 “atomic buffalo turds” for a TV spot on the series Playing House. The snack, which she calls “the crack candy of the barbecue world” (we say cardiologist’s nightmare), is jalapeño peppers stuffed with spices and cream cheese, wrapped in bacon and cooked low and slow for three hours.

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