Culinary Adventures with Camilla

When one of your best friends since high school turns fifty - and there's a hoshigaki workshop at a local farm on her birthday weekend - you know exactly how you are going to celebrate. Okay, she isn't technically a high school friend, but she's married to a high school friend and quickly became one of us as soon as we met her! Beware: When you spend time with friends from high school, sometimes it's as if all those years in between vanish. We were listening to 80s hits in the car on the way to the farm and our jokes were pretty juvenile...lots about balls and, well, I'll just leave this one here from our stop at a succulent garden shop on the way home. Three of us were independently taking photos of these while the fourth told us 'dirty old ladies' to knock it off. Then we posed for a group photo and threatened to gift these to each other for Christmas.  Okay, enough of our antics and back to these Japanese balls: hoskigaki . Hoskigaki  are dried, preserve...

Today the Sunday Funday group is celebrating pancakes. Thanks to Stacy of  Food Lust People Love , Sue of  Palatable Pastime , Rebekah of  Making Miracles , and Wendy of  A Day in the Life on the Farm  for coordinating this low-stress group. And, for this event, Stacy is hosting. She wrote: "National Pancake Week is February 27 through March 5, 2022 so let's start the week out right by sharing our favorite pancake recipes from any cuisine or culture. Anything with a batter is fair game: dosas, griddle cakes, idli, okonomiyaki, alebele, banh xeo, palačinky, farinata, and traditional or crêpes de sarrasin, just to name a few! There are so many! Share your favorite." Here's the pancake party line-up from the #SundayFunday bloggers... 5-Ingredient Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes from Palatable Pastime Cinnamon Roll Pancakes from Our Good Life Fluffy Yummy Banana Pancakes from Sneha’s Recipe Fluffy Buttermilk Pancakes from Amy's Cooking Adventures Hobak Jeon - K...

Today the Sunday Funday group is writing about and sharing Kawaii recipes. Thanks to Stacy of  Food Lust People Love , Sue of  Palatable Pastime , Rebekah of  Making Miracles , and Wendy of  A Day in the Life on the Farm  for coordinating this low-stress group. This week, Sue is hosting and asked us to share Kawaii recipes. Here's the #SundayFunday recipes line-up... Anpanman Rolls from Sneha’s Recipe Kawaii Pikachu Pumpkin Pie from Amy’s Cooking Adventures Rice Krispie Monster Treats from A Day in the Life on the Farm Totoro Inari from Culinary Adventures with Camilla ka·waii /kəˈwī,'käˌwīˌē/ adjective (in the context of Japanese popular culture) cute; noun the quality of being cute, or items that are cute. I decided to turn one of our favorite foods - inari -into a kawaii inari...in the shape of Totoro! No real recipe...just the seasoned rice with canned tofu skins. Make into a cute kawaii little critter! Seasoned Rice Seasoned ric...

This month - and next - the Cook the Books group will be reading Midnight at the Blackbird Café by Heather Webber.* Deb of Kahakai Kitchen is hosting. In the announcement of the next four books, she wrote, "I believe a touch of magical realism now and then is good for the soul, there's a flock of blackbirds that only sing at night, and of course, there's pie!" On the Page There seem to be a lot of books with this formula: person inherits a restaurant from a relative, comes to town to wrap up the estate (and sell!), but ends up falling in love with the restaurant and, usually, a person tied to the restaurant or town. Oh, and the person might unearth some family secrets along the way. The fact that the plot is predictable doesn't diminish the enjoyment though! I remember feeling the same way about The Restaurant by Pamela Kelley . And  Midnight at the Blackbird Café  fit the bill of an enjoyable summertime read. Set in Alabama, we meet Anna Kate Callow who has a...

I must have read something or searched for something that put  Strange Weather in Tokyo: A Novel by Hiromi Kawakami*, translated by Allison Markin Powell,  in my suggestion list from Amazon. And since I'm always up for reading a book by a new-to-me author, I ordered it! Yes, I'm a sucker for books. I had no idea what to expect and read the book over the course of just two days. On the Page After reading - and thoroughly enjoying - this book, I am still unsure into which genre I would place it. It's a love story, certainly, but it's also a poignant tale about loneliness. I also don't really understand the title.  At the center of the story is Tsukiko, a woman in her late thirties, who works in an office and lives alone. One evening, she runs into a former teacher who she calls Sensei, "teacher." His age is never mentioned, but I pieced together that he's at least three decades older than she is. Through the course of the novel, their relationship grows...

  imdb.com Next month, February 2021, I am hosting  Food'N'Flix , the movie-watching, food-making group rallied by Heather of  All Roads Lead to the Kitchen . So for the second month of the new year, I chose  Spirited Away . I was able to access the movie on Amazon Prime. I hope everyone who wishes to participate can find a way to access it.  Let me start with this: I had never heard of this movie until my boys purchased it on Amazon. They have long been fans of Studio Ghibli movies though I have never watched any of the movies with them. However, the first time they watched it, both commented that I should suggest it to my foodie movie group. I largely ignored that suggestion until I was reading through a list of top twenty-five films that food lovers have to watch. Okay. I was convinced and asked Heather if I could host it for a month. Done. To Whet Your Appetite For those unfamiliar, as I was, Hayao Miyazaki is the Japanese animator, writer, director, produce...