Culinary Adventures with Camilla

  This is the August #TheCakeSliceBakers event. Since this is only my third event this year, I'll recap what we are all about... In this group, we are given a selection of three cake recipes. We each choose one cake to bake, and then on the 20th - never before - we all post about our cake on our blogs. There are a few rules that we follow, but the most important ones are to have fun and enjoy baking & eating cakes! Follow our  Facebook ,  Instagram , and  Pinterest   pages where you can find all of our cakes, as well as inspiration for many other cakes. You can also click on the links below to take you to each of our cakes. If you have a blog and are interested in joining The Cake Slice Bakers and baking along with us, please send an email to thecakeslicebakers at gmail dot com for more details. The Cake Slice Bakers also have a new Facebook group called  The Cake Slice Bakers and Friends . This group is perfect for those who do not have a blog but want to join in the fun and b

Jeff of  Food Wine Click!  is hosting this month's edition of the French Winophiles. You can read his invitation  here . We are looking at low-intervention, organic, biodynamic wines from Languedoc. If you are reading this early enough, feel free to jump in our our live Twitter chat on Saturday, August 20th at 8am Pacific time. Follow the hashtag #Winophiles and be sure to add it to anything you tweet so we can see it. Here's the line-up of articles for this event... Camilla shares The Concept of Lutte Raisonnée and Braised Pork Paired with a Frémillant at Culinary Adventures with Camilla Wendy shares An Edible Cheeseboard and a Crisp Rosé from Languedoc at A Day in the Life on the Farm Jane shares Languedoc Corbières Rosé with Salade Nicoise at Always Ravenous Robin shares Languedoc – does it need to find itself? at Crushed Grape Chronicles Jill shares Try These Organic Languedoc Wines at L'Occasion Gwendolyn shares her Languedoc post at Wine Predator...Gwendolyn Alley

If you follow my blog regularly, or my social media, you'll know that we spent some time on the Hawaiian island of Oahu this summer - for our first family vacation since 2018. And you would also know that I like to read books that take place wherever I happen to be vacationing. I shared that I read all fifteen books of A Murder on Maui  series in my post Fifteen Books of Poe and a Shave Ice Addiction ; I had read the first four while we were on the island and on the plane ride home. On the plane ride there, I read the four books in J.E. Trent's Hawaii Adventure  series. Jessica Kealoha, a detective with the Los Angeles Police Department, hails from Hawaii where her father's side of the family is in law enforcement and her mother's side is in the Japanese Yakuza (organized crime). After her father dies under mysterious circumstances, Jessica returns to the Big Island to support one sister who has just been diagnosed with breast cancer and another sister who manages the f

This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Selefina spices. Complimentary product was provided for this post and this page may contain affiliate links. However, all opinions expressed here are my own. When a contact from  Selefina * asked me if I would like to sample their new line, I looked through the website and let her know which of their products intrigued me. One that I ordered was their dried Hibiscus Petals . We don't drink a lot of soda in our household. But when we do, I usually make the syrup and add sparkling water. That's it! In this case, I decided to make a hibiscus simple syrup and drop a candied hibiscus in the bottom of the glass for a garnish And this syrup process is easily doubled or even tripled if you want to make more at one time. It keep in the fridge for awhile. I honestly am not sure how long as it never lasts long in my house. Hibiscus Simple Syrup 1 cup organic granulated sugar 1 cup water 1 Tablespoon dried hibiscus petals Place all of the

This month the Wine Pairing Weekend Bloggers are taking a CSA Challenge and pairing produce from a local, organic farm - either through a CSA subscription or a farmers' market stand - with a bottle of wine. I am hosting the group this month; you can read my invitation  here .  Also this month, actually, this week, I was a guest on the  Cook Local, Eat Local podcast  hosted by the Wine Pairing Weekend's founder David Crowley of  Cooking Chat . The episode went live today and you can listen to it here .  We talked about what was in his CSA share last week, some recipes I would make with the veggies, and a wine pairing for the dishes. I can't wait to see what the other #WinePW bloggers share for this event. If you are reading this early enough, feel free to jump in on our live Twitter chat on Saturday, August 13th at 8am Pacific. Follow the hashtag #WinePW and be sure to add it to anything you tweet so we can see it. Here's the group's line-up... A Summer Harvest and A

Last month, my family and I spent a week on Oahu. I hadn't been to the Hawaiian islands in far too long and it had been even longer since I visited Oahu where my dad lived after leaving the Philippines and before his family moved to the Monterey Peninsula. But regardless of the time and distance, it feels like home.  To get myself in the Hawaiian frame of mind, I downloaded a ridiculous number of books set in Hawaii, including the fifteen A Murder on Maui books in the series by Robert W. Stephens. Yes, fifteen. I only read four while we were there. Then I read the other eleven after we got home. I'll be honest: it's not great literature. But they were entertaining and I breezed though the set that features Edgar Allen Rutherford, nickname Poe, as a private investigator who is married to a Maui detective Alana Hu. Poe also owns a bar with his childhood best friend, Foxx, who is also the father of a daughter with Alana's sister, Hani. Poe narrates as if in a conversation