Culinary Adventures with Camilla

Murder in the South of France by Susan Kiernan-Lewis* was the first in a series about character Maggie Newberry, an American who heads to France to identify the body of her sister who has purported died from a drug overdose. I blazed through this one in a couple of hours and jumped right in to the second book Murder à la Carte , actually preferring the second to the first. However, after reading these two, I think I'm done with the chick-lit mystery genre for awhile. On the Page image from amazon.com As I already mentioned Maggie heads to France to identify the body of her sister only to discover that she also has a niece about whom no one knew. Maggie makes some rather unbelievable choices and decisions, especially regarding Laurent. The Newberrys seems oddly detached from the death of their daughter Elise even though they end up taking custody of the granddaughter. And the authorities were written as uncaring and incompetent. I think the only thing that kept me ...

May was a productive month for my  Foodie Reads 2016 Challenge , I have carved out full afternoons to read this month - meaning, I ordered my family to leave me alone while I crawled under the covers and devoured pages and pages of books. After making Cricket Chip Cookies for my Bizarre Foods SEM , I came across  Edible: An Adventure into the World of Eating Insects and the Last Great Hope to Save the Planet  by Daniella Martin.* Timely. On the Page... I have to admit: I didn't love this book. It was okay. The subject is even wildly compelling for me. So, it means something that I struggled to get through this. Well, I struggled through the first 100 pages or so. And, considering that the book itself is only about 130 pages, not including the voluminous introduction...well, you can do the math. I definitely didn't love this book. She starts off as too much of a treatise and less of a narrative. For pages and pages she details the FCR (food conversion ratio) ...

Welcome to the March event for The French Winophiles, a wine-swilling, food-loving group coordinated by Christy of  Confessions of a Culinary Diva . We've made it around France. And by c licking on the following regions you can read my recipe post that includes the #winophiles round-up as well. So far, we've traveled - by tabletop and goblet - to  the Loire Valley ,   Corsica ,  the Southwest ,  Languedoc-Roussillon ,   Côtes du Rhône ,   Bordeaux ,   Champagne ,  Burgundy , and Alsace . To Pays Nantais Today we're headed to the  Pays Nantais region of the Loire Valley. The Pays Nantais is the area around the city of Nantes, on the central western coast of France. Its wine production dates back to the Roman era and it's known for producing stellar Muscadet. On this map, we're looking at the green areas today. The  Pays Nantais  Pairings Culinary Adventures with Camilla  presents Balsamic Roas...

Welcome to Waffle Week! This is my first time participating in Waffle Week and I, admittedly, and not really a waffle aficionado. That might change after this event. But I do make waffles. For August's #FoodieExtravaganza I made a savory Chicken and Mashed Potato Waffles . I've made waffles with olive oil and waffles with coconut milk . Not surprisingly, I opted to go savory for this post. I was also inspired by the flats of tomatoes I picked up from Serendipity Farms . One of my favorite things to do with tomatoes is make a huge batch of caponata . Caponata is an agrodolce (sour-sweet) dish from Sicily that features eggplants, squash, tomatoes, and capers in a sweetened vinegar sauce. I usually toss it into pasta or smear it on slices of bread. For this, I decided to spoon it on top of mini polenta waffles. You can make the caponata the day before you want to make this dish. Just heat the portion you plan to use. Many thanks to Kimberly of Feed Me Seymour for hos...

I love cherry season. And when we aren't eating them by the handful, I'm usually trying to come up with savory ways to eat them. Remember...I don't have much of a sweet tooth. For this last day of Hot Summer Eats , I'm sharing a relatively simple, cherry-laden appetizer. Casabella , one of our event sponsors, sent me a cherry-pitter. So, I gave it a whirl. You can win one of your own, and two other Casabella kitchen gadgets,  at the giveaway . Ingredients Roasted Cherries 4 C fresh cherries 1 T organic raw turbinado sugar 1 t Caribeque's Island Thyme Herb Seasoning* 2 T aged balsamic vinegar 1 t lemon zest  4 crushed cloves of garlic 1 T olive oil To Serve burrata crackers olive oil salt Procedure Preheat oven to 450 degrees F.  Pit your cherries. We did a pit-off between our new pitter, our old pitter, and a stainless steel straw! Place cherries in a bowl and toss with the remaining ingredients. Spoon the c...

Welcome to our Valentine Croquembouche Challenge (#ValentineCroque). We are a group of intrepid bloggers who occasionally like to push ourselves well out of our comfort zone to meet baking challenges fearlessly. Jenni Field of Pastry Chef Online , whose tagline is 'Fearless in the Kitchen', challenged us to make Valentine’s-themed croquembouche.  We are here to show you that you do not always have to be bound by tradition, so we created croquembouche that adhere to the spirit of the dish if not the actual letter. You’ll find all sorts of combinations of flavors here (including a savory version) that will hopefully expand your idea of croquembouche . Not all of our croques were wildly successful, but we all learned something, and we all pushed ourselves. Besides, blogging shouldn’t always be about aspirational and often unobtainable Pinterest moments. It should also be about the near misses and the journey we take when we take a chance. Thanks for joining us today. If y...