Culinary Adventures with Camilla

#BreadBakers is a group of bread loving bakers who get together once a month to bake bread with a common ingredient or theme. You can see all our of lovely bread by following our  Pinterest board  right here. Links are also updated after each event on the  Bread Bakers home page .  We take turns hosting each month and choosing the theme/ingredient. If you are a food blogger and would like to join us, just send an email with your blog URL to Stacy at foodlustpeoplelove@gmail.com. This month’s event is Chinese Bread hosted by Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm . I almost didn't join the fun. For some reason, I hadn't seen the prompt. But, after a quick brainstorm, I realized that it was the perfect time for me to play with some Chinese dumplings. I've always wanted to make them. So, here's the line-up of the #BreadBakers Chinese breads... Chinese Buffet Style Donuts by Palatable Pastime Cocktail Buns by Zesty South Indian Kitchen  Hua Juan (Scallion Flower Ro...

Next weekend, the #SundayFunday bloggers are sharing recipes for the Lunar New Year. So, we had some fun creating different dishes. Spring rolls, known as ' Chun Juan ', in Chinese, are eaten during the Lunar New Year as a symbol of wealth and prosperity because they resemble gold bars. The lucky saying for eating spring rolls is Hwung-Jin Wan-Lyang , which translates to 'a ton of gold.' These are certainly not totally traditional. Other recipes include mushrooms, bamboo shoots, and water chestnuts. We went with a more basic filling that included ground pork, carrots, celery, green beans, and onions. And I had the Kitchen Elves help me roll. Ingredients  makes approximately 2 dozen 1 pound ground pork 1 cup diced onions 1 cup diced celery 1 cup diced carrots 1 cup chopped green beans 1 to 2 Tablespoon olive oil wrappers (I found ours frozen at a local Asian market - they told me to get the round ones), defrosted and separated water oil for cooking (I used a canola oil) ...

Deb of  Kahakai Kitchen  is hosting our bi-monthly reading group  Cook the Books . And, if you'd like to join the fun, the posts aren't due till the end of January, so you still have time. In October, we received the next four selections. The December-January pick is Eat Joy: Stories & Comfort Food from 31 Celebrated Writers edited by Natalie Eve Garrett*. I must have ordered it (on my Kindle) as soon as I saw the list. Then, when I clicked back to the group site last week, I made a note of the books, and ordered this one - again! - in a hard copy. Whoops! So, I read it on my Kindle this past weekend and wrapped up the book as Christmas gift for a friend. On the Page   December is a good time to read a collection of short stories or essays. With the mayhem of the season, it's nice to be able to digest something standalone instead of having to keep track of a story over a period of days punctuated by not picking up a book at all! This one was a delight. Garrett w...

Deb from Kahakai Kitchen  is our   Cook the Books   hostess for this round; she chose  Shark's Fin and Sichuan Pepper: A Sweet-Sour Memoir of Eating in China by Fuchsia Dunlop* as our April-May Cook the Books selection. You can read her invitation: here . If you want to join us, posts aren't due till the end of May. You have plenty of time. On the Page I have had this book for several weeks, but, for some reason, I was reluctant to pick it up from my nightstand. I don't know why. Perhaps the ocean conservationist in me was cringing at the thought of shark finning. But I tucked it into my backpack when I left to chaperone my son's robotics team as they competed out of town. And, after dinner, when all the kids were in their rooms, I settled into my bed with a glass of wine and this book.  Fuchsia Dunlop is a British cook and writer who specializes in Chinese cuisine. She was the first westerner to train as a chef at the Sichuan Institute of Higher Cuisi...

On the heels of a book following the noodle road, I am continuing my  Foodie Reads Challenge  with one that follows an author's musings about fortune cookies, American-Chinese food, and lots more:  The Fortune Cookie Chronicles: Adventures in the World of Chinese Food by Jennifer 8. Lee. * The '8' in her name is not a typo - it's not supposed to be a 'B'; she was named '8' because that is a lucky number. On the Page Despite the intriguing topic of Chinese food, I did not find this book particularly engaging. I struggled to read more than ten pages at a time. Really, I felt as if it were about 100 pages too long. Lee's book spans nearly 300 pages and it read more like a high school research paper than a book penned by a professional journalist. Still, her premise was interesting. Lee begins by telling a story about the Powerball lottery on March 30, 2005 when 110 people played the same numbers - from their fortune cookies - and ending up sp...

Heather of  girlichef  is hosting this month's  Food'N'Flix . This month, we had a choice - we could watch either Kung Fu Panda or Kung Fu Panda 2 .  Click to see Heather's  invitation .  Not only did we watch the movies in the theatre - possibly more than once! - but we own the discs. So, when we headed to Lake Tahoe for Spring Break, we brought both movies and I told the boys I needed help picking a dish. We watched both movies again while snuggled up in front of the fireplace last week. Then we cooked these this week. D voted for bean buns; but when he said he would try to stick 40 buns in his mouth like Po, I vetoed that idea. R asked for radishes. Just plain radishes. I explained that wasn't really post-worthy, but that I would get him radishes. Since inner peace plays a huge role in saving the world in Kung Fu Panda 2 - and Spring peas are all around - I decided to made some Inner Peas Dumplings! Get it? from http://kungfupanda.wikia....