Culinary Adventures with Camilla

It's hard to believe that our year-long journey of the Book Club Cookbook Cooking Project is drawing to a close. And, to finish off the year, I chose  Corelli's Mandolin  by Louis de Bernières. Click to read my invitation . And stay tuned for a wrap-up of all the recipes from this book. Soon. We love Greek food and have made a fair number of recipes, including Stuffed Grape Leaves ,  Souvlaki Arni , Bouyourdi , Befteki and Potatoes . So I was excited to read the book (again) and find inspiration in the pages. On the Page... I had read the book years ago - and saw the movie right after that. I wanted to re-read it with an eye on the food. Even still, I was captivated by the story. And I really can't categorize the story into a single category. It's a historical novel; it's a tragedy; and it's a love story. Antonio Corelli is an Italian soldier who, under Mussolini's orders, has occupied the small Greek island of Cephalonia. Corelli is bi...

Here we are at the final #thebookclubcookbookCC event. Final. Can you believe it?? It's hard to fathom that our year-long journey to explore - and cook from -  The Book Club Cookbook, Revised Edition: Recipes and Food for Thought from Your Book Club's Favorite Books and Authors  by Judy Gelman and Vicki Levy Krupp* is drawing to a close. Judy, Vicki, and their publisher,  Tarcher-Penguin ,  provided the hosting bloggers with copies of the book plus copies to giveaway each month of the project. We are so grateful for their generosity over the past year. This month I have selected Corelli's Mandolin  by Louis de Bernières. The book was also made into a movie, starring Nicholas Cage and Penelope Cruz. I highly recommend both the book and the movie.**  The Book Club Cookbook  includes a recipe for Spankopita  which I am sharing below, but feel free to cook anything that intrigues you be it something Greek or Italian. I, myself, mig...

It's funny for me to think that fifteen years ago, I didn't eat chocolate. One of my best friends from high school was floored when she saw me eat chocolate for the first time. In all the years she'd known me, I couldn't stand chocolate. But, as soon as I got pregnant with R, I began to enjoy it. Really enjoy it.  Now, we've done chocolate tastings at boutique chocolatiers all over California's central coast; we've participated in chocolate walking tours (read about our Chocolate Walking Tour in San Francisco ); I've taught an entire class about chocolate; and we've even curated our own chocolate pairings for dinner parties . At a  chocolate tastings at Alegio in Palo Alto, D really wanted to take one of the cacao pods home. I offered to buy it. No dice. "They're just for our display. They're not for sale," they apologized. Then, last December, we visited Dandelion Chocolate in the Mission District in San Fr...