Culinary Adventures with Camilla

  So, welcome to the June #SoupSwappers event. Wendy of  A Day in the Life on the Farm  started this group and I'm always grateful to have a few more recipes to try. This month, Wendy is hosting and we are sharing soups that start with leftovers. Here's the line-up of deliciousness... Palatable Pastime shares  Corned Beef and Cabbage Soup  Sneha’s Recipe shares  Keto Almond Biscuit With Keto Chicken Pot Pie Soup   A Day in the Life on the Farm shares  Leftover Steak Teriyaki Soup   Culinary Adventures with Camilla shares  Mac’N’Cheese Minestrone   Karen’s Kitchen Stories shares  Pappa al Pomodoro (Tomato and Bread Soup) Mac’N’Cheese Minestrone On the day that titles were due - thankfully Wendy sent me a message while we were hiking - I thought about what I had in the fridge and settled on making minestrone with leftover mac'n'cheese. The night before I had taught R how to make homemade cheese sauce for pasta. Easy peasy! Mi...

  I haven't been very good at participating in this group, but my good friend Wendy of A Day in the Life on the Farm was creating the HTML for the event and messaged me while I was on a hike. So, I threw out a title that fit the theme - Pasta & Greens - knowing what I had at home in the pantry. Done. Thanks for the nudge, my friend! Welcome to the June 2022  Improv Cooking Challenge .  And I haven't been very consistent, but I love the idea of the group, so I will try to be better in the coming months. The idea behind Improv Cooking Challenge: we are assigned two ingredients and are challenged to create a recipe with those two things. This month's items: pasta and greens. Here's what the crew is sharing with those ingredients...  Palatable Pastime: Beef Kimchi Noodles Sneha’s Recipe : Farfalle Pasta With Pesto Alfredo Sauce   Magical Ingredients : Paneer and Spinach Stuffed Shells With Malai  Culinary Adventures with Camilla: Pesto Orzo with Broccoli ...

  Today the Sunday Funday group is writing about and sharing potatoes 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 Stacy is hosting and asked us to post stuffed potato recipes. She shared: "When I was growing up, one of my favorite restaurants was a baked potato place with myriad fillings like stroganoff and broccoli and cheese, even chicken curry! Of course, they also served the more traditional potatoes with bacon, chives, sour cream and cheese. For this event, I challenge you to get creative! Make stuffed baked potatoes! They can be stuffed and double baked or just filled after baking. They can be big meal-sized potatoes or appetizer-sized baby ones." Here's the line-up for the week... Bacon-wrapped Loaded Baked Potatoes from Food Lust People Love Baked Potatoes With Butter & Goat Cheese F...

The  Secret Recipe Club  has a fun, themed - fifth Monday - event that blurs the lines between the groups. You can be assigned to any other participating blogger in groups A through D. Our theme this month: Picnic & BBQ. I was excited to be assigned to The Spiffy Cookie , written by Erin. I've been reading Erin's blog for awhile. She's even taken part in a few online multi-day, multi-blogger events I've organized; and she's one of the hosting bloggers for our year-long project:  The Book Club Cookbook Cooking Project . So, I was excited to get to explore her blog more. I have a funny story. I recently saw one of my local friends bragging about the best chocolate chip cookies ever on social media. And it was one of Erin's recipes. I was so tickled to see my blogging life intersecting with my actual life. I told Jenn, "Not only is she a Spiffy Cookie, but she's a Smart Cookie!" Erin has a PhD in Microbiology.  More importantly for m...

Last week I posted a review of Viva Naturals' Goji Berries. Click for that post and a recipe for Spiced Ginger-Turmeric Tisane with Goji Berries:  here .  So, I've been inspired to create new ways to use my gojis. For this recipe, I decided to go for a savory dish. I whipped up a pot of this sweet, tart, and spicy soup for lunch one afternoon this weekend. It was well-received! Ingredients 2 C dried goji berries 1 to 2 C boiling water 2 C stock (I used my Mineral Rich Vegetable Broth ) 1 large onion, diced 1 T olive oil 1 t ground cumin 1 broccoli bunch, chopped into cubes 2 summer squash, chopped into cubes 1 C red and yellow bell peppers, chopped 2 C kale, chopped 1 T fresh herbs freshly ground salt freshly ground pepper sour cream for serving, optional Procedure Place dried goji berries in a small mixing bowl. Pour 1 to 2 C boiling water over them. Let them soak to rehydrate for, at least, 10 minutes. In a large soup pot or...

It's time for Group B's April 2016 for the  Secret Recipe Club . This month I was assigned to  Cheese Curd in Paradise   which is written by Ashley. I've been reading Ashley's blog for awhile. She's even taken part in a few online multi-day, multi-blogger events I've organized; and she's one of the hosting bloggers for our year-long project: The Book Club Cookbook Cooking Project . So, I was excited to get to explore her blog more. Ashley lives in Green Bay, Wisconsin with her husband, her son Kellen and a brand new little boy! She serves up mostly family-friendly fare and you can follow her on social media: on  Facebook   and on  Twitter . I have to say I was more than a little excited about her pesto recipes - Garlic Scape Pesto,   Almond Basil Pesto , and  Basil Pesto . Then, there's what she makes with the pesto -  Creamy Chicken Basil Pesto Gnocchi , Herb Crabcakes with Citrus Pesto Aoili , and Bacon Pesto Spread . I ...

It's time for Group B's March 2015  Secret Recipe Club   reveal. This month I was assigned to  Family, Food, and Fun , a blog written by Rebekah. This was a hit. I served it to celebrate the lunar new year, the year of the goat, a few weeks ago.  Gong Xi Fa Cai! Rebekah and Grant have five kids, two furry babies, and five feathered friends. She cooks and bakes from scratch because she really wants to provide the best possible future for her kids through a healthy and well-balanced diet. I love her main food philosophies: 1. If my grandparents couldn't have eaten it when they were kids (1920's), we don't need to eat it either (ie, boxed, packaged mixes, high fructose corn syrup, aspertame and other artificial sweeteners, msg, partially hydrogenated oils, etc) 2. If the ingredient list includes items my third-grader can't read or pronounce, we don't need to be eating it. So true, Rebekah. I had a lot of fun perusing your blog this m...

I made sure to have my parents pick up our  High Ground Organics  CSA when we were out of town...then I completely blitzed on picking up my box yesterday. Ugh. I was distraught. Yes, over vegetables. Thankfully, there was a grace period and it was still there! I was so excited; I left work and ran right over. Inside the box this week there were several stalks of broccoli. Yum. This is a quick, easy, but tasty sidedish that highlights the freshness of the broccoli...with a little Asian flair. We love it. Ingredients 1-2 stalks of broccoli 1 T organic raw almond butter 1 T soy sauce 3 T olive oil freshly ground pepper Procedure Trim the broccoli stalk into segments. Blanch broccoli in boiling water. Drain. While the broccoli blanches, place the almond butter, soy sauce, and olive oil into a large mixing bowl. Whisk together to form a dressing. Add in the broccoli. Season with pepper to taste. Serve while still warm. Enjoy!

Since today kicks off the Chinese Lunar Year of the Horse, we blended our own Chinese Five Spice. I cheated...and I had Jake grill the chicken for me ahead of time. Double cheating! But my Spice It Up! class is five minutes shorter today due to an earthquake drill, so I can use all the help I can get. In China, Japan and other Asian countries, it’s customary to eat long noodles, signifying longevity, on New Year’s Day. Since the noodles are never to be broken or shortened during the cooking process, I decided to go with a stir-fried “Long-Life Noodles” dish. CHINESE FIVE-SPICE CHICKEN 2 lb chicken thighs 1/3 C soy sauce 1/4 C olive oil 1 T crushed garlic 2 t Chinese five spice powder 1 t grated fresh ginger Combine all ingredients except chicken, and use as marinade. Then, marinate chicken at least an hour, but can marinate overnight. Bake in a 375 F. oven, basting once or twice, for about 45 minutes or grill until done. I made this ahead of time and tossed ...

For Jake's birthday, I planned a 'Fungi Feast for My Fun-Guy' and one of our friends gave him a Grow-Your-Own Mushroom Kit as a present. Fun. Only, he forgot about it until he noticed that a mushroom was pushing its way out of a box. Funny. So, he hung it on a hook in the kitchen and dutifully sprays it to keep it moist. Today, he told me that it was time to cook the renegade mushroom that was not 'following the directions' and was sprouting out of the top instead of out of its grow hole. Really funny. I had never seen a kit like this. Then we went to the Maker Faire Bay Area and the Far West Fungi booth had them for sale. Far West Fungi 's webstore carries a shitake mushroom kit . And you can also get an oyster mushroom kit  online at Uncommon Goods . I carefully cut off the lone mushroom, sliced it up, and included it in our stirfry for lunch. 1 T crushed garlic 1/2 lb ground turkey 4 carrots, scrubbed and cut into coins 1 celery root, peeled an...

I'm on Orphan-detail again today for the  Secret Recipe Club  and I am  so  excited about having been introduced to Julie at Little Bit of Everything . She writes that her blog is a creative journey through her cookbook collection which is over one hundred strong! I need to be more diligent about using my cookbooks, too. Right now, they are just expensive, albeit gorgeous, dust-collectors. Yikes. Looking through Julies's blog - and what goodies were showing up in my CSA box this evening - I settled on her oven-roasted broccoli . The other two recipes that I considered were her savory caramelized onion-sage-cheddar muffins and her penne with sage-brown butter . Soon! Oven-Roasted Broccoli Adapted from Little Bit of Everything 1 bunch broccoli, cleaned and trimmed 2 T olive oil 2 cloves garlic, crushed freshly ground sea salt freshly ground black pepper 1/3 C panko bread crumbs 1/2 C shredded Parmesan Preheat oven to 375F. Cut the broccol...

As a mothers' day present to myself, I bought a few bottles of olive oil from Holman Ranch in Carmel Valley. It's organic, estate-grown and bottled from Holman Ranch's one hundred Tuscan varietal olive trees. And it is tasty!  Truth be told, I actually bought three bottles, fully intending to keep one and give the other two as gifts. Buuuuuuuut, well, let's just say, I selfishly decided to keep all three bottles for myself. I use olive oil in everything. I cook with it. I bake with it. I make salad dressings with it. And with especially tasty olive oils such as this one, I drizzle it on barely steamed vegetables sprinkled with a little bit of sea salt. Tonight, my cooked veggie of choice was broccoli. Che squisito! If you're interested in getting some Holman Ranch olive oil for yourself, email them: info@holmanranch.com . They'll set you up.

Mei quin choi is like a baby bok choy, so I used it in an Asian-inspired stir-fry, making use of a few other goodies in my CSA box: Spring onions and broccoli shoots. I softened thinly sliced Spring onions in a splash of olive oil, added the broccoli shoots (the smaller side-shoots from the main, central shoot that is normally harvested for sale) and quartered mei quin choi. I seasoned the veggies with a splash of soy sauce and a splash of sesame oil then removed them from the pan. I seared sea scallops, then stirred in black beans and the seasoned veggies.